


Key to Time

by larxenethefirefly



Series: Music of Eternity [5]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:52:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 39,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1377934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larxenethefirefly/pseuds/larxenethefirefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Rose, Romana, and the Doctor are searching for the final segment to the Key to Time. But not all is as it seems, and they're in a race against time as two planets stand on the brink of mutual destruction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bubblygal92](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bubblygal92/gifts).



> Happy birthday Bubbly!

Rose awoke to the Doctor lying half on top of her, his head on her shoulder and limbs akimbo. Mouth full of his hair, she began to shove at him. “Get off,” she mumbled, huffing as he seemed to snuggle into her further. He really was rather heavy.

After a late night talking, they had ended up falling asleep together on Rose’s bed. The Doctor had stripped down to his shirt and trousers, she in a t-shirt and yoga pants. The last thing she remembered was falling asleep as the Doctor rambled on about his Academy years, lying in his lap as he sat propped up against the headboard. Apparently he had decided to sleep as well, hence their current position.

Finally managing to extricate herself, Rose went into her ensuite to pee then, after a brief consideration, brushed her hair and teeth. She also washed her face, since her makeup was flaking and irritating her after being on all night.

She was not surprised to see him wide awake when she re-entered the bedroom, hands crossed behind his head and staring up at her ceiling. The TARDIS was currently projecting the stars visible from his boyhood home (not that Rose recognized it; she had thought it pretty, and asked the TARDIS to keep it like that), and as she snuggled against his side he began naming them for her.

Eventually, the TARDIS began to brighten the lights, and Rose sighed. “Looks like it’s time to go.”

His hand, which was covering hers that was lying on his chest, gave hers a squeeze. “It’ll be over soon, Rose. Then we’ll leave Romana at the Library and we can go watch an opera on Phylos.”

“Promise?” Rose asked, looking up at him.

“With both my hearts,” he replied, and kissed her.

~*~

Romana had done the necessary calculations to determine where the next fragment was, and the Doctor seemed surprised to find that the trail led them to Atrios. “You know, I’ve never actually been there,” he mused, as Romana laid in the course.

“Nor to Zeos?” the Time Lady asked, as the TARDIS hummed indignantly at her. She patted the console in apology, since the Doctor’s tinkering had made several of the buttons and levers perform different tasks than they were meant to.

The Doctor seemed lost in thought. “What?”

Romana rolled her eyes and moved aside so Rose could help her. “Atrios and Zeos. The twin planets on the edge of the helical galaxy. Didn’t they teach you anything at the academy?”

“Yes, but we’re not going to Zeos,” he reminded her.

Rose and Romana looked at him in confusion. “No, we’re going to Atrios,” Romana replied, exasperated. She then turned to Rose. “What did you do to him last night?”

“Nothing,” Rose giggled. “That’s all him.”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Why don’t you get on with it then?”

“We have been, Doctor,” Rose said, smiling. “Course is already laid in.” The TARDIS hummed in agreement.

He ignored them, crossing over to K9. Rose strongly suspected he was pouting “Atrios, K9. Atrios. I wonder what the inhabitants are like there?”

Rose looked at Romana. “It’ll be about an hour, so do you want tea?"

“I can never turn down your tea, Rose,” Romana replied, and they left the Doctor and K9 discussing the particulars of Atrion culture.

~*~

Atrios, however, was not a pleasant place.

Princess Astra watched and listened with a heavy heart as reports flooded in. The War with Zeos had been going on for years now, with her people constantly suffering and always one step behind. She had made several efforts to contact the leaders of Zeos to broker a peace treaty, but every single one of her requests went unanswered… or unnoticed. The last time she had tried the signal had simply hit empty space. She would have suspected sabotage, but no one had known she had done so. In fact, it was treason to make contact with the Zeons ever since the Marshal took power.

Astra closed her eyes. To the Marshal, peace hadn’t even entered the equation, and if he had found her trying to contact Zeos she would have surely been arrested. He was suspicious enough of her already.

Astra wanted to see the sun again, to feel the wind on her face and run through the forest. She wanted to see her people thrive and live and love. She hated living underground, scurrying from hiding hole to hiding hole like a terrified mouse. She couldn’t even remember what had started the war- only that it existed.

Major Shapp and the Marshal were arguing again, a common occurrence that had been building in frequency over the past few months. Everyone, it seemed, was on their last leg, and her people, who had once been happy and innocent, were downtrodden and angry. She hadn’t seen anyone smile in years.

“Any news of counterattack?” The Marshall finally asked.

“None, Marshal,” Shapp replied, wearily.

“What do you mean, none?”

Shapp looked resigned. “The fleet is still trying to locate the target, sir.”

“The target, Major Shapp, is Zeos!” The Marshal snapped, and Astra winced. “The planet. Isn’t that big enough?”

“The navigation systems are being blocked, sir. The Zeons must be using a new device. The whole fleet’s flying blind.”

The Marshal glared. “Or have they all turned cowards?” He accused, and Astra dearly wanted to slap him. How dare he accuse those brave young men of being cowards while he sat and watched them die? “I want this attack pressed home, Shapp, before the Zeons smash us to pieces. Is that clear?”

Shapp looked like he wanted to argue but abated. “Yes, sir.”

Reports were flooding in from all over Atrios from the stations, the technicians there reporting the death count, supply numbers, the damage done. She snapped to attention when she heard the hospital had been hit, and she immediately made for the door, only to be stopped by the guard. “I’m sorry, your Highness, you can’t leave without an escort. Marshal’s orders.”

She spun to face him. “Marshal, I insist on going to see the hospital immediately.”

“Too dangerous,” he replied.

She stiffened. “The hospital has been hit!”

He looked at her incredulously. “So has everywhere else, your Highness. We’re under nuclear attack!”

“How much longer are you going on with this futile war?” She demanded. Astra cursed the day she had been forced to turn over all ruling to the Marshal. Ever since then, she had been treated like a fragile doll and her people suffered. “Atrios is being destroyed around us. We must negotiate before it’s too late! We must have peace.” Please, let there be peace, she begged silently.

“You don’t beg for peace, Princess,” he said, coldly. “You win it!” He crossed to his command chair. “Our counterattack is already underway. When it has succeeded, we shall have victory within our grasp. Then we shall have peace!”

“But don’t you understand?” Astra demanded, refusing to back down in front of his stubborn war ideals. “We shall all be wiped out if we go on, Zeons and Atrions alike!”

“I understand only my duty,” he said in false sympathy. “And my duty as Marshal of Atrios is to prosecute this war to a successful conclusion. Yours,” he scoffed, “is to uphold the people’s morale and give them comfort.”

Astra seized her chance. “Then let me go to the hospital. I can’t do anything here.”

The Marshal considered her and abruptly turned to the Major. “What’s the situation, Shapp? Is the raid over?”

Shapp nodded. “Yes, sir. At least for the moment.”

The Marshal looked reluctant, but finally nodded. “Very well, your Highness. One of my guards will accompany you to the hospital.”

Relieved, Astra wasted no time and made her way to the door. The Marshal, however, called after her. “Where, no doubt, Surgeon Merak anxiously awaits you.”

Oh, she would visit Merak alright. Just not for the reasons he assumed. Astra forced a smile and gave a tiny courtsey. She needed the comfort of the only friend she seemed to have left in these bitter, dark times.

Before, when her family was still alive, Astra had barely known Merak. He was studying under her family’s physician, and while he was always kind, he was shy and awkward around her. She had found it endearing, if a little annoying at times. She repeatedly asked him to treat her like he would any other patient, but he was firm in his conviction of chivalry and treating her with all the respect that nobility demanded.

And then the war started.

The palace had been the first things hit, her parents slain instantly. Astra had been spared because she had snuck out into the forest, looking for a type of flower that only bloomed at night. She had heard the explosion and immediately returned, and it had been Merak who held her back when she wanted to run straight into the fires that were consuming her home.

After that, he took her on as his personal mission, constantly being there for her and supporting her when she became overwhelmed. With no other siblings Astra was immediately the ruler, and she had tried everything she could to keep her people alive. It had been Merak who came up with the idea of using the abandoned mine tunnels for raid shelters as the bombardment from Zeos continued, and over the next year they had been expanded and fortified.

Then the nuclear war began, and the tunnels became their new home.

The groans of the wounded reached her ears, and she forced herself to keep a comforting look on her face as she greeted each person by name. The ward was in shambles, some people covered in stone dust and others lying next to collapsed support beams. It would not due for her to show her worry and fear, and if playing a part meant giving them hope, it was something she would do without hesitation.

Merak found her soon, amber eyes watching in concern. “Surgeon Merak,” she said, formally.

“Princess Astra,” he replied, bowing.

She gestured around the room, more for the benefit of her guard, though she was curious. “Why must these brave men and women be left on the floor like rubbish?”

Merak looked apologetic. “The wards are full, your highness.”

“I see.” Her heart ached.

He caught the shift in her expression. “Excuse me, your highness, but your rad-check is due for a renewal. If you’d just come this way…” he gestured to a curtained alcove, and she followed willingly. As soon as the curtain closed, she launched herself at him and he hugged her fiercly.

“I was so worried,” she breathed. “They told me your ward had been hit.”

He squeezed her before stepping back. “Damaged, but not destroyed.”

She looked him over. “And you?”

“Luckier than many,” he said, softly, and she paled at the implications.

“Oh, when will this all end!” She exclaimed, pacing rapidly.

Merak watched her, concerned. “Have you been able to contact the Zeons?”

Astra gave a dry laugh. “The Marshal has me watched at all times.” She gestured at the curtain, where her guard was no doubt lingering and trying to eavesdrop. However, she and Merak had perfected this situation, and they were speaking loud enough for the other to hear, but barely.

“We must get through. It’s the only way. Whether we’re seen as traitors doesn’t matter any longer.” He muttered, frustrated. Astra laid a hand on his shoulder. Loyal he may be, but Merak was prone to rash decisions.

In an effort to calm him down, she replied, “I’ll go on trying, but none of our messages seem to get through.”

“Jammed from here?” he asked, concerned. Astra shook her head. “If they were, it would mean the Marshal is on to us.”

“No, it’s not that,” she replied. “He’d have arrested us.” She quickly explained what she had found- or rather, not found.

Another bomb landed, and Merak sighed. “Zeos is there, all right.” He looked at her and hesitated. “Astra…” he said, and took her hand.

She knew that look. It was the same look he had given her the night he kissed her, the night she had turned him down because her people had needed her. It was a flimsy excuse; she had been terrified, of him, of his feelings, and she had done the first thing she could think of. Merak had seemed to understand, but as the days went on and his feelings seemed to get stronger, Astra found it harder and harder to deny herself.

The guard entered, breaking the moment. “Behind schedule, your highness,” he said, gruffly.

Merak looked disappointed, but pretended that he was checking her bracelet. “You must take more care, Princess, and remember to keep your rad-check renewed.”

Astra nodded, unable to bring herself to talk. Merak was just another regret in this long, forsaken war.

~*~

The TARDIS materialized smoothly, and Rose looked up from her discussion with K9. “We arrived, then?” she asked, standing up from where she had been sitting against the wall.

“Should be in parking orbit over Atrios,” the Doctor replied as he and Romana did the finishing touches on the TARDIS’s landing to make sure She didn’t drift off-course. “Let’s see where we’re going, shall we?”

“Why not?” Romana asked, and the Doctor opened the view screen.

To reveal empty space.

“I know I’m not as smart as you two Time Lords,” Rose said slowly. “But surely I should be seeing something?”

The Doctor looked agitated. “That’s odd. That’s very odd. Wouldn’t you say that’s very odd?”

“That’s very odd,” Romana agreed, also concerned.

They looked at each other. “Wonder what went wrong?” The Doctor asked.

“Better check the coordinates,” Romana offered.

Rose did so. “Zero Zero Six Nine.”

“That’s exactly what you gave me,” the Doctor said to Romana. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Quite sure.” Her concern deepened as the scan’s results came back. “Something’s gone astray.”

“No, no, no, just a minute,” he interrupted. “There may have been a time shift.”

Rose sighed and wandered over to the view screen. She really was not much help in times like these- she knew how to operate the TARDIS on a minimal level, and while she understood what the various buttons and levers did, she didn’t know how they worked. Things like this- planetary locations, orbits, fixed moments in time- those were all things that the Doctor and Romana were trained to recognize and respond to.

A small red planet finally appeared on screen after a moment of slight bickering, and the Doctor rushed over to join her. “There it is!” he exclaimed. “Well, it’s something, anyway.” He mused.

“Seems kinda small,” Rose replied skeptically.

“It’s millions of miles away,” Romana explained. “But there’s no sign of Zeos.”

The Doctor looked speculative. “Do you know what I think?” he asked, in a tone that meant he was asking a rhetorical question. “I think that something has gone wrong. Something fairly serious.”

Rose shuddered. “The Black Guardian?”

He took her hand. “It could just be a coincidence,” he said, as gently as he could manage. He knew she was still a little traumatized by her nightmares.

“I wouldn’t want to bet on it,” Romana said, quietly.

“Neither would I,” the Doctor replied with a disquieting look at the view screen. He moved back towards the console and Rose wrapped her arms around herself, a chill creeping down her spine. “There’s really only one thing to do,” he muttered.

Romana perked up as an idea came to her. “Listen, why don’t you take us in on manual.”

“I think I’ll take us in on manual, with circumspection,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Right,” Romana said, sarcastically. Rose smirked.

~*~

Astra was heading to the children’s ward, mind whirling, when her escort stopped her. She jerked out of his hold, biting her tongue. She was at the mercy of the Marshal’s men, after all, and a tongue-lashing would only tighten her ‘security’.

“Well?” she demanded when he ended the call.

The escort looked at her. “There’s been a change in plan, your Highness. Your visit to the children’s ward has been cancelled.”

Astra frowned. The children’s ward was the only bit of joy left on her planet, and their indomitable spirits gave her the strength to continue fighting, some days. “Why?” she asked, trying to stay civil.

“A danger of subsidence, your Highness. The recent attack.”

Her heart seized. “But what about the children?” she asked, hoping none had been hurt.

“They’re being evacuated. We’re to go to K block so that you can welcome them into their new quarters.” The escort replied.

“I thought K block was closed down years ago because of radiation contamination,” Astra replied, utterly confused. It had once held medical supplies, and she remembered that the everything inside the block to be destroyed because they couldn’t be used to treat patients.

Her escort looked unconcerned. “Apparently it’s clear now, your Highness. This way, please.”

With no other option, Astra did as he said. That didn’t stop the confusion and worry from abating and it only grew as they approached the K block. Her escort seemed jittery, glancing back at her every few seconds. Whatever the Marshal had said to him, he wasn’t taking it well.

They finally approached K-block, and the silence was unsettling. Astra hesitated when her escort opened the doors. It certainly didn’t seem dangerous, but her instincts were screaming at her to run.

“You must go in. Please, your Highness. I’m only obeying orders,” her escort replied, nearly begging.

Astra squared her shoulders. Whatever awaited her, she would face it. “Yes, I understand,” she replied, and swept inside.

Her escort closed the doors behind her, and Astra took a shuddering breath. It wasn’t until the radiation bracelet began beeping that she allowed the fear to creep in. It seemed the Marshal had tired of her after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two! The Doctor and Romana get arrested, and Rose gets separated from the Doctor.

Romana sighed as the scanner finished its work on the Atrios look-alike, giving her the exact same results as before. “Well, there’s still no signs of Zeos, but I’m picking up a reading for Atrios’ twin.”

The TARDIS beeped, directing her to a different reading, and Romana stifled a gasp. The Doctor looked up in concern. “What’s the matter?”

“Radiation levels you wouldn’t believe!” Romana replied. The reading was well off the charts. Certainly high enough to kill any life on the surface of the planet, and possibly most below it without the proper shielding.

Rose ducked under the Doctor’s shoulder to see what they were looking at. “Good heavens,” the Doctor said. “You could fry eggs on that street.”

“Probably wouldn’t want to eat them, though,” Rose supplied, and he teasingly tugged on a lock of her hair.

 

“But that means…” Romana said, staring into space as she read the Timelines. They were a huge tangle, all cancelling each other out, and interwoven was one one shining gold thread that she couldn’t trace. It unnerved her. Atrios wasn’t anything special- a rather backwater planet, really, all things considered. But the Timelines demanded that a Fixed event took place there, even though nothing of the sort had been recorded at the Academy.

“What?” the Doctor asked.

She looked vaguely confused. “The Timelines. They’re… no matter. There must be a huge nuclear war going on down there according to the readings.”

The Doctor scoffed. “Not at all, no.” He looked down at Rose’s head, considering, then began separating her hair.

Rose and Romana both gave him an odd look. “What else could it be?” The Time Lady demanded.

“I don’t know,” he replied, airily, as he swiftly began braiding. Rose smiled in bemusement. “Probably someone giving a huge breakfast party. Think positive. Why do you always assume the worst?”

Romana raised an eyebrow. “Because it usually happens.”

“Empirical poppycock!” he announced, and finished one plait with a flourish. Romana was watching his work in a mixture of disbelief and amusement. “Where’s your joy in life? Where’s your optimism?” he asked.

Romana sighed. “It opted out.”

K9 chimed in. “Optimism. Belief that everything will work out well. Irrational, bordering on insane.”

The Doctor glared at the robot as he fished about in his pocket for another band. “Oh, do shut up K9.” His search successful, he tied off his work. Rose examined it in a mirror the TARDIS provided, and was rather impressed. She hadn’t thought he knew how to braid, or that it could be done so quickly.

Meanwhile, he had turned back to lecture Romana. “Listen, Romana. Whenever you go into a new situation you must always believe the best until you find out exactly what the situation’s all about, then believe the worst.”

“Ah, but what happens if it turns out not to be the worst after all?” She replied, sarcastically.

The Doctor’s smile faded and he frowned. “Dont be ridiculous, it always is. Isn’t it, K9?”

Rose snorted, and K9 sounded distinctly confused. “Master?”

“Still, nuclear war.” the Doctor continued, and Romana looked resigned to the fact that he once again claimed her idea. “It’s always difficult walking into these situations. You never know who’s fighting who.”

“Or why,” Rose pointed out.

The Doctor waved his hand in dismissal. “Oh, I think I can say why.”

“Why?” Romana challenged.

“Why? Why, it’s got to be, hasn’t it?” He demanded. “It’s got to be something to do with the sixth and most important segment of the Key to Time, hmm?” He reminded them.

They returned to work, trying to locate the segment on Atrios’ surface. Rose helped for a bit, inputting data that she was told to, but after a while the theorems and numbers made her head spin so she stopped. She fiddled with one of her plaits instead and studied the planet on the screen. There was something about Atrios that filled her with a sense of dread; she couldn’t name what it was, only that she knew something was going to happen there.

There was a tiny blip on the planet’s surface, and Rose blinked. She stared at the image for a while, trying to see what had changed, until she noticed a small dot drawing closer. Her eyes widened. “Doctor? Something launched from the planet, and I don’t think it’s good.”

He looked at it. “A welcoming party, maybe? K9, what do you make of that?”

“Missile identified. Nuclear warhead,” K9 supplied helpfully.

Romana stiffened. “What? Let’s get out of here!”

He stopped her from hitting the dematerialization sequence. “No, no, no, no, no, no. Wait. We’ll dematerialise at the last moment.” He said. “Let whoever’s shooting at us think they’ve hit us. Always confuse the enemy.”

“It’s getting closer,” Rose said, nervously.

Romana glanced at her but nodded at the Doctor. “If you say so.”

The Doctor nodded. “Right, link that tracer in. I want to land as close as possible to the sixth segment. The less time we spend on Atrios, the better.”

“We really should hurry,” Rose urged.

Romana slid the tracer into the console. “Ready.”

“Standing by.” The Doctor said. “K9, how close till impact?”

“Three, Two…”

“What?” The Doctor yelped, and lunged for the console. Rose yelped and crashed into Romana as the TARDIS shook violently. The Time Lady kept her upright, and when the TARDIS landed with a thump they turned equal glares at the Doctor. K9, having been flung across the console room, gave an irritated grumble.

“What? No damage done,” the Doctor replied, eyes wide in a show of innocence.

Rose frowned at him but walked over to the doors. “Might as well see where we’ve landed.”

She opened the doors, her two companions following after. Romana let out a groan as they took in their surroundings- a dark, damp tunnel with cobwebs and dull lights. “Oh, don’t say it,” the Doctor said, crossly, as he took Rose’s hand. She shuffled closer to him.

“Don’t say what?” Romana said, innocently.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t say another underground passage.”

Romana didn’t deign to reply. “Well, I wonder how deep we are this time.”

“Yes,” he replied absently. “K9? K9, are you still sulking in there? Come on out!”

“You did just throw him against the wall, practically,” Rose reminded the Doctor as the mechanical dog made his way out the TARDIS doors. Romana closed them when he finally appeared. 

“At least there’s no swamps or water,” he said. “It’s quite safe.”

Of course, at that moment the entire tunnel seemed to shake as a bomb detonated above ground. “You were saying?” Rose asked, as she clung to the Doctor’s coat. One of his arms had her in a death grip around her waist.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head briefly before standing up, pulling her with him. K9 said something, but it sounded like a tape being played backwards. All three humanoids looked at each other. “What did he say?” Romana asked.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor replied, then gave K9 a few knocks on his muzzle. “What did you say?”

“Master, radiation levels indicate nuclear warfare in progress on planet surface,” K9 repeated.

Rose blinked. “Come again?”

“How deep are we?” Romana asked, concerned.

“400 metres down,” K9 supplied. 

Rose looked at the ceiling nervously. “If we can feel the affects all the way down here…”

“They’re taking a pasting,” the Doctor confirmed. “Imagine what it’s like on the surface.”

“It’s not dangerous, is it?” Rose asked. “Cause you two can withstand radiation; I can’t.”

The Doctor wrapped his arm around her. “So long as you don’t have prolonged exposure, you’ll be fine. We’ll get the final segment and be gone long before you start feeling dizzy.”

“Radiation levels are variable,” K9 said, as reassuring as a mechanical dog could. “No sign of immediate life. The corpse on the left, however, is recent.”

They all turned at that announcement to see a figure in all black collapsed upon the ground. The Doctor quickly examined him and nodded sadly. “You’re right, K9. He hasn’t been dead long. Shot, poor chap.”

Rose rearranged his body. “At close range, from the front,” Romana observed, seeing the hole the laser had created.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said solemnly. “Must have been one of his friends. Just goes to show, you can’t trust anyone nowadays.”

“I don’t think I’m going to like this place very much.” Romana said, quietly. Rose agreed with her, leaning wearily against a pair of steel doors.

The Doctor looked down at the man once more. “Let’s locate the sixth segment and get out of here.”

“I’m with you all the way,” Romana replied fervently. She pulled out the tracker and swept it around slowly, until it reached the right pitch- facing the steel doors. “Through there,” she said.

Rose moved aside so the Doctor could examine it. “Locked and lined with lead. What does that suggest to you?” he asked Romana.

“High radiation zone?” she offered.

“Affirmative,” K9 replied, still sounding off.

“Any sentient life through there, K9?” The Doctor asked.

“Regret lead shielding will prevent effective analysis.” K9 explained.

Rose crouched down near him. “The radiation is really affecting you, huh?” She asked.

“Once we are clear of all contaminants, I will function at my complete capacity,” was the response.

The Doctor had gone back to examining the door. “It’s well guarded, or at least it was. Perhaps the door’s booby-trapped.”

Romana stiffened as she seized his arm. “Doctor,” She hissed, making it clear she wanted the conversation to be quiet. Rose was still talking to K9.

He looked over at Rose before matching Romana’s tone. “Yes?”

“Remember what we were saying about the Black Guardian?”

He nodded. Rose had been a particular interest of his; he seemed almost obsessed with her. She had been more scared than she let on during that encounter, but he knew that she was still affected by it. Her nightmares had only made things worse; he had taken up residence in her room a few times when the nights were particularly bad. “Yes. ‘Will you come into my parlour’ said the spider to the fly?”

“Very apt.” She replied.

The Doctor wouldn’t put it past the Black Guardian to separate them somehow. He knew very well that the Doctor’s strength was in his companions, Rose especially. He feared what would happen should Rose be caught alone with him. “I think we should tread very carefully,” he said at last. Then, raising his voice, he called out, “K9?”

The robot dog broke off from his conversation with Rose. “Master?”

“Could you make a hole for me in that door, K9? A little, little hole, K9. We don’t know what’s beyond there, do we?” He asked.

~*~

On the other side of the door, Astra could feel the weariness setting in. She had been sitting for what felt like hours, but for all she knew could have been a few minutes; she was cold, hungry, and dirty from tramping through the underground tunnels. She was also worried about Merak- if the Marshal had decided to assassinate her, then he was surely the next target.

She was about to give up all hope when a small, red laser pierced through the door.

~*~

Rose had taken refuge in the TARDIS since the Doctor didn’t know how long it would take to cut through the door, and he didn’t want her to be exposed longer than necessary. She readily agreed, keeping an eye on things through the monitor and watching the radiation levels.

When a man dressed in military paraphernalia appeared, Rose immediately ran to the doors. The TARDIS, however, refused to let her out, beeping angrily when Rose kicked them. “I can surprise him!” She argued, since he had drawn a gun and was leading the Doctor and Romana away.

The TARDIS stubbornly refused to let her out. Rose banged on the doors some more, but it wasn’t until another rumble signified that a bomb had hit that the TARDIS finally relented.

Rose dashed out, coughing at the dirt and debris that littered the tunnel. “Oh, no,” she said in despair when she saw the tunnel had collapsed. “What now?”

“Mistress?”

Rose turned to see K9 hiding in a small alcove. “Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Rose sighed. “Do you know where they were taken?”

“Negative,” K9 replied. “The cave-in prevented me from following. However, scanners indicate they are heading further into the tunnels, and deeper underground.”

She relaxed. “At least they’ll be safe. Can’t say much for me, though.” She looked at the debris. “Guess it couldn’t hurt to start clearing some of this away, though.”

Rose started heading toward the cave-in, but flinched away when another one occurred, blocking the TARDIS. She groaned. “Should have stayed inside,” she muttered. She was contemplating how to move the debris when a soft noise from behind her made her turn. Since K9 hadn’t moved, Rose cautiously made her way to the door. “Hello?” she called out, hesitantly.

“Is there…” someone coughed and continued weakly, “is there someone there?”

Rose crouched down at the hole and saw someone- a woman, she gathered, judging from the make-up- peering back at her. “I’m Rose.”

“Like the royal flower,” the other person whispered. Rose could barely make out her words. “Can you… help me?”

Rose swallowed. “Of course. What’s your name?”

“A… Astra.”

“I’ll get you out of there, Astra. Don’t worry.”

There was no reply, and Rose shivered, wondering how long she had been locked away in there with the radiation. She looked at K9. “Any suggestions?”

He resumed with the laser. Rose settled back to wait.

~*~

The man who had arrested them said very little to them as he forced them along, and eventually they came to a large, open room with computer terminals and assorted personnel. They all had the haunted, empty look of those fighting a losing war, and Romana silently wished that they had arrived sooner so that they could have done some good for these people.

They were quickly surrounded and the man- who someone referred to as the Marshal- stared at them contemptuously. “What were you doing at that door?” he finally asked, after staring at them for a while.

“I’ve told you. We were trying to avoid the bombardment. I thought that door might lead to the way out.” the Doctor replied patiently.

The Marshal wasn’t convinced. “That door leads to certain death.”

“What?” The Doctor said, and looked at Romana. “That man saved our lives!” She forced a laugh, hoping she looked relieved. Unlike the Doctor, acting wasn’t her strong suit.

“You’re obviously Zeon spies,” The Marshal interrupted, clearly aggravated.

The Doctor looked offended. “Spies?” He turned back to Romana. “Do we look like spies?” At her denial he continued. “I thought spies were supposed to be inconspicuous.”

“Surgeon Merak, sir,” someone announced from behind them, and walked up to the small platform to join the Marshal.

The Marshal continued staring at the Doctor and Romana speculatively. “Good. These are the intruders who were caught trying to break into K block.”

The newcomer blinked and looked at the Marshal. “Who are they? What do they want?”

Romana fought back the temptation to roll her eyes. They were speaking as if she and the Doctor couldn’t hear what they said.

“Precisely what I intend to find out before I execute them.” The Doctor jumped and Romana looked at him worriedly. “Bring in Merak.”

The man snapped and a younger man strolled in, dressed in a grey tunic and leggings. “Marshal, I’ve got a hundred patients waiting!” he said, aggravated.

“Then they’ll have to wait,” the Marshal said dismissively. “You know these people?”

Merak glanced at them then turned back to the Marshal. “No. Should I?”

“I think you do,” The Marshal said, joining them. He stared hard at the young surgeon. “I think they are your accomplices.”

Romana sighed as the surgeon protested. She really should have seen this coming- power hungry general needs to take full control, kills the one in charge and blames it on someone else. No doubt Merak was one of those who opposed, and she and the Doctor were just a convenient addition to the plan. She didn’t know who the woman behind the doors was, but she was probably a victim as well.

“Princess Astra is missing,” the Marshal said. “She was last seen with you. Since then, her escort has been found dead.”

The Doctor stiffened, and she looked at him. From his look, she knew he had figured it out too- the woman behind the door was the princess.

Merak looked alarmed. “We must find her! Are you searching for her?”

“Everything possible is being done.” The Marshal replied stiffly, clearly unhappy about being interrupted. “Now Merak, I know you don’t agree with my conduct of this war.”

Merak was firm in his reply. “I don’t agree with war, nor does Astra.”

The Marshal ignored him. “I think it’s possible that you might have been foolish enough, misled no doubt by the noblest of motives, to cooperate with the enemy. Am I right?”

“No, Marshal, you’re wrong,” Merak said. There was the faintest trace of fear in his eyes, though.

“It would be much better for you to admit everything.” The Marshal said. “I arrested these two myself, standing over the body of the Princess’s escort.”

The Doctor shook his head, looking exasperated. “I told you, we’re not even armed!” he exclaimed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver object- a dog whistle. “Look, nothing, just a whistle. Care for a blow?”

The Marshal took it, eyeing it suspiciously. “Shapp,” he commanded, and the other man, who had been quiet until now, joined them. The Marshal handed him the whistle, and after a shrug he blew it. He frowned in confusion when no sound occurred.

“It’s useless!” The Marshal fumed, dropping the whistle to the ground after snatching it out of Shapp’s hand. The Doctor bent to retrieve it. “Don’t play the fool with me!” he glared at the Doctor. “What is the purpose of your visit?”

“Tourism,” the Doctor replied, nonchalantly as he cleaned off the whistle. 

The Marshal looked outraged. “In the middle of a nuclear war?”

“Yes, well, I run this small agency, you see.” The Doctor babbled quickly. “Trips to battlefields future and past. How civilisations died. It’s very profitable. Isn’t it very profitable, Romana?” he asked, turning to her suddenly.

She nodded, trying a convincing smile. “Oh, absolutely. It’s very educational.”

“For the last time,” the Marshal replied dangerously, “what are you doing here?”

The Doctor finally gave in and leaned in closer. “Looking for a key.”

~*~

K9 had managed to get the doors open quickly enough, and Rose had rushed over to where the young woman lay. Her pulse was weak, and she was exceedingly pale; Rose hoped that it wasn’t too late to save her.

“I suggest you go back to the TARDIS, Mistress,” K9 replied. “Radiation levels are rising and you will feel the effects soon.”

Rose glanced over at him. “The TARDIS is blocked, K9. There was a cave-in almost immediately after I left.”

“The Master will not like it if you-” he began, but Rose quickly cut him off.

“Just get him back here in time and we won’t have to worry about that,” She said, and K9 decided not to argue. He trundled off, and Rose looked down at Astra with a sigh. “I don’t know if you can hear me,” she said, “but help is coming. I know it may seem hopeless, but once the Doctor gets here, you’ll see.”

There was a shuffling sound, and Rose looked up. “Who’s there?”

Silence. Then, ever so slowly, a section of the wall slid open.

~*~

The Marshal was clearly at the end of his rope, and if Romana hadn’t seen this technique work before (and trust in the Doctor completely), she would have given in and told the man everything. As it was, she only hoped the Doctor’s plan would be completed quickly, so that they could find the next segment and leave the doomed planet behind.

“Everything you have told me is obviously a pack of lies. It’s clear to me that you are Zeon spies. You’ve murdered one of my guards, abducted the Princess Astra, no doubt with the collusion of Surgeon Merak here. Unless you divulge her whereabouts, you will be executed immediately as spies. Now is that clear?” he demanded.

The Doctor grinned and gave a small bow. “Beautifully put, I thought,” he replied, seemingly unconcerned with the way events were going.

“Well?” The Marshal asked.

The Doctor shrugged. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we can help you.” Hidden from the Marshal’s gaze, the Doctor motioned the ‘run’ symbol in Gelpersian sign language. Romana tensed and awaited the signal.

“Is that your last word?” The Marshal asked.

“No,” the Doctor said, flabbergasted. “No, I sincerely hope not, but I think we’ve been here long enough.” He started walking toward the door.

The Marshal stiffened. “Stay where you are!” he snapped.

The Doctor looked back, plainly angry. “Listen, we tell you the truth and you don’t believe us. You accuse us of crimes we haven’t committed, and now you’re going to have us shot. I think after a long journey that’s a bit too much, Marshal. K9, lights!”

The room was plunged into darkness and Romana ran for the doors. “Goodbye Marshal!” The Doctor called out, mockingly, as he followed her.

Merak followed after them, but split off early on- no doubt checking on his patients, though Romana wondered where he could hide. “Where are we going?” she demanded as the Doctor wove through the tunnels.

“To the TARDIS!” he said, as if the answer should have been obvious.

They came to a screeching halt when they reached K block, and stared in utter confusion and dismay when they say the cave-in directly in front of the alcove the TARDIS sat. “Rose?” The Doctor called out. “Rose, can you hear us?”

When no reply came, Romana felt dread creeping into her hearts.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Astra disappear, and the Doctor and Romana get a better picture on what is happening.

“Rose is not answering,” Romana said, as the Doctor attempted to shift a few of the debris. Though the cave-in leading to the doors of K-block wasn’t as bad as the one to the TARDIS, it was still dangerous. Free-hanging wires, wood braces, and all manner of detritus blocked their way, and it creaked ominously whenever they so much as tugged on it. Since the TARDIS was more important they had shifted their attention back to it.

“She might be in the TARDIS,” he replied, shortly, as the entire wall of rubble shifted when he touched a wooden beam. He froze and carefully moved away. “Right. Different approach.”

Romana studied the debris. “It looks unstable. One wrong move and either we’re buried or the roof collapses further.”

He shot her an irritated look. “Yes, Romana, I know that. Care to get your hands dirty?”

 

She bent to help, analyzing the settlement of the rocks and calculating the angle needed to support the roof and leave a bit enough gap for them to squeeze through. “I don’t know if we can finish this in time. The Marshal’s men are probably coming after us as we speak.”

“Possibly, possibly,” he said. “K9’s watching our rear. Besides, there’s always a way out.”

Romana moved a rock out of the way, pausing before she disposed of it. There was the sound of footsteps moving rapidly towards their location. “Someone’s coming,” she muttered, and they ducked behind some rubble. They pounced when the person came into view, and Romana breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out to be Merak.

“Oh, it’s you,” the Doctor said, disappointed. He was clearly itching to get a hold of the Marshal’s men and show them a thing or two.

Merak didn’t look worried about his ambush. If anything, he looked more anxious. “Where is she? Where’s Astra?” he asked, worriedly.

“We don’t know,” Romana replied, turning back to the wall of rubble.

The Doctor was staring intently at Merak. “Just a minute, just a minute. Why do you want to know?” He asked.

The boy blushed slightly, but his voice was proud. “I love her.”

“Ah.” Romana and the Doctor exchanged uneasy looks- with the cave-in and the raid still going on, the fact that he might find his lost love didn’t bode well. Plus, they still didn’t know quite how to react with public declarations of love. Time Lords, after all, were notoriously repressed, although Romana was getting better at expressing herself and the Doctor had been around humans for a long time. “Well, congratulations.” The Doctor finally said. He continued gravely. “But, just before the Marshal arrested us, I did find somebody, and judging from the voice it was certainly a young woman.” He hoped it wasn’t Merak’s Astra, but…

Merak gripped his arm. “Where?”

The Doctor blinked and pointed at the rubble leading further into K block. “Well, through there.”

“That’s the high radiation zone!” Merak panicked, and the Doctor had to haul him back when it looked like he was about to charge head-first through the debris.

“Calm down!” he ordered, and the young man froze. “Now, we need to shift this rubble before we can do anything. Removing the wrong piece can have this entire tunnel down on our heads. Listen to what I say, and we can perhaps find your princess.”

Merak nodded, and with his help they were able to adequately brace the ceiling and squeeze through a small hole that Romana had created. Rose was no where to be found, and Romana hoped that she really was on the TARDIS, for the Doctor’s sake. She had seen him when Rose was in danger, and if she ever doubted the validity behind the title ‘Destroyer of Worlds’, that was not one of those times. He still seemed relatively in control right now, but the Doctor had always been a mystery to her. Rose had been the only person who could really get under his shell and see the man beneath it.

The Doctor peered through the hole K9 had drilled. “There’s no one there,” he said in surprise. Merak made an unhappy noise. “K9, any sign of our pursuers?”

“Negative, Master. They all went the other way.” K9 replied.

The Doctor nodded. “Good. Now listen, K9. K9, we want this door open, but be careful. There may be someone on the other side.” He patted the dog on the head when he agreed.

“Come on,” the Doctor said, moving everyone out of the way.

Merak looked between them suspiciously. “What is that?” He asked, gesturing to K9, who was examining the door.

Romana steered him gently. “It’s alright. he won’t hurt you. He’s with us.”

Merak didn’t look convinced, and stepped away from her. “Who are you?” he demanded, and looked horrified. “You aren’t Zeons, are you?”

The Doctor sniffed. “No, no, no, of course not, but we’re friendly. Don’t worry about that.” He dismissed the boy with a wave of his hand and turned towards his companion. “Romana?”

“Yes?” she asked.

“Keep an eye around the corner,” He ordered her. Though Romana was a bit annoyed at him ordering her about, she did as he asked- the guards would show up eventually, after all, and better a warning than what happened last time. Once she had left the Doctor turned to Merak. “You need to speak honestly. Why would the Marshal want to get rid of Astra?”

Merak blinked at him, plainly startled. “The Marshal? Why would you think he was involved?”

The Doctor forced back the temptation to roll his eyes. The boy may be a surgeon, but he clearly wasn’t very good at reading people- then again, it was hardly his fault. The Doctor was a Time Lord, after all, and his mental capacity was far greater than Merak’s. “Too many coincidences,” he finally said. “Well?”

“Astra and I were trying to make contact with the Zeons to try and make peace,” Merak finally admitted. “The Marshal knows. He wants the war to go on, of course,” he finished bitterly.

“Of course,” the Doctor replied, having had his own fair share of experience with power-hungry tyrants.

Merak looked back at K9 anxiously. “How much longer?”

“Twelve point three seconds,” K9 replied.

Somewhat relieved, Merak continued his story while the Doctor looked at K9 quizzically. “Well, I knew I was in danger, but I thought Astra was safe. The Marshal always said that he needed her support, her influence with the people.”

The Doctor looked thoughtful. “Is there any other reason the Marshal would want to get rid of her?”

Merak shook his head. “None that I can think of, no.” He hesitated. “Do you… do you think she’s ok?”

The Doctor was spared an answer when K9 spoke. “Ready, Master,” he said, and Merak instantly went to the doors.

“Good,” the Doctor said. “Romana!” he called out, softly, just loud enough for her to hear. Romana hurried over, and on the Doctor’s count they burst through the doors.

The hallway was empty. “She’s not here!” Merak said in distress.

“Neither is Rose,” the Doctor said absently. “Anything, Romana?” he asked, as she used the tracer. She shook her head.

Merak blinked. “Rose?”

“Our… friend.” Romana said as the Doctor stared around, troubled. “She managed to hide before the Marshal caught us.”

A glint caught Merak’s eye. “Here’s something,” he said, and picked up a round object. Dread filled him as the light revealed it to be Astra’s circlet. “This is hers.”

Romana studied it and ran the tracer over it. “Then she was here,” She said, and frowned when the tracer remained silent.

The Doctor nodded as he slowly spun in a circle before stopping abruptly and staring at a spot on the ground. K9 began inching towards the doors. “Danger, Master. It is dangerous to remain in this environment.”

Merak gripped the circlet. “Astra must be here. She must be.” His voice was desperate with worry. The Doctor continued to stare at the ground, fixated on something.

Romana laid a hand on Merak’s shoulder. “Look, we can’t do anything here. If you want to find Astra, we must leave.”

“If Astra’s been-” Merak began, but Romana refuted that possibility. He remained defiant. “Then I will stay with her.”

The Doctor spoke up abruptly, after bending down to grab something from the floor that Merak had missed. “Merak, people don’t dissolve from radiation. You’re a surgeon, you should know that. After all, where are her clothes? If she’s not here, she must be somewhere else.”

Merak looked at the circlet helplessly. “Astra,” he said, softly.

Romana could feel the radiation starting to prickle along her skin, and knew that if Merak hadn’t been running on adrenaline and focused on the princess, he would have felt worse. “Come on, Merak, worrying won’t help. Let’s just get out of here before it’s too late.” She said, gently.

Merak allowed her to tow him away, and she cast a concerned look at the Doctor- his hand was clenched around whatever was in his grip. “K9, keep an eye on that wall,” he ordered, and followed after them. Though the robotic dog sounded confused, K9 did as he was asked.

“What is it?” Romana said, quietly, as Merak wandered over to collapse against a wall.

The Doctor didn’t look as if he would reply, but he finally opened his hand.

Romana stifled a gasp. There, in his palm, was Rose’s TARDIS key. “But that means… how did she get in there?”

“K9 opened the door a lot more quickly than I expected,” The Doctor replied. “He must have opened it for her after we were arrested, since she was blocked from the TARDIS. The key was resting just beside that wall I told K9 to guard. Since she would not part with it willingly, she left it there as a clue.” Or so no one would get their hands on it, he thought silently. He put the key in his pocket.

“That means she could have been telling us how she got out,” Romana said. “They could still be alive somewhere.”

The Doctor quickly crossed over to Merak. “Do you know if there’s anything behind that room?”

Merak looked to where he was pointing and shrugged. “Nothing but a recycling shaft. This area’s been disused for years because of a radiation leak.”

Romana contemplated this. “Well, Rose can’t have been there for very long. But how did she get Astra out?”

“They could have moved her while we were with the Marshal.” The Doctor said. “They moved the guard’s body. On the other hand…”

Romana looked at him, worried that Rose had been taken hostage after all. “On the other hand what?”

“Well, on the other hand, anything’s possible.” It sounded like he had escaped from his funk, or more probable, that he had buried it now that there was the slightest possibility Rose was safe. “Well almost. Merak, a recycling shaft? Recycling what, exactly?”

Merak looked slightly bewildered at the Doctor’s manic attitude. “Scrap metal waste for the war effort. Everything metal gets put down the shaft to be recycled in the furnaces. Why?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Oh, just general interest. Come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?” Romana asked, as he went in the opposite direction of where Rose and Astra had disappeared.

He looked at her, askance. “Well, if there’s no way out there’s only one thing to do.”

No way out? Had she missed something? Romana wondered. “What’s that?”

“Go back the way we came. I’d like to find out what that Marshal’s really up to. Come on.” He marched back down the hallway after reminding K9 to stand guard by the wall. Romana groaned and followed after him.

Merak followed. “But if they didn’t escape through the recycling shaft, where are they?”

Romana sighed. “Who knows? But we might as well stick with him; he eventually gets answers, even if it takes a while.”

~*~

With Astra unconscious, Rose felt uneasy about leaving her in the small, dank room they had been stashed in. The person that had retrieved them had not said a word, and even with the training her second Doctor had given her in Venusian Aikido he had subdued her. It was sheer luck that she had been able to drop her TARDIS key at all, and she hoped the Doctor would get her message before someone else came along and grabbed it.

Rose had searched her pockets for anything useful, but even with the bigger-on-the-inside adjustments, she really wasn’t in the habit of carrying things around with her, and even worse at remembering to switch things from pocket to pocket. She growled in frustration when she realized the screwdriver the Doctor had made for her was back on the TARDIS, and probably still in the jeans she had worn last week.

Her search did reveal a pair of smelling salts, and after peering out the door (their captor, at least, did not lock the door, which either meant extreme negligence or a massive ego) she walked back over to Astra and waved the smelling salts under her nose. “Sorry,” Rose said, as Astra coughed violently. “You alright?”

Astra blinked up at her. “Who…” she coughed, raggedly. “Who are you?”

“Rose. We spoke earlier, remember?”

“I…” she turned green and promptly rolled over to vomit; Rose pulled back her hair and helped her into a sitting position, wincing at the mess on Astra’s fine silk robes. Then again, they were already soiled and torn from being dragged into the room.

“Forgive me,” Astra said, once she had finished. Rose had pulled out a nearly-empty water canteen from her pocket that Astra had used to rinse her mouth. “This is not how I expected our first meeting to go.”

Rose smiled. “Perfectly alright. Do you think you can stand?”

“I can try,” Astra replied, and wobbled as Rose helped her. She took a few steps before having to stop and fight off a wave of nausea. “I apologize. It seems the radiation has affected me.”

Rose opened the door carefully, making sure the coast was clear before heading towards the teleport. It wasn’t too far, and Rose hoped Astra could hold on until then. “It’s alright. We don’t have far to go, and after that we can find my friends.”

“The ones who spoke to me before, yes?” Astra asked.

“Yeah. We have this ship, and we’ll be able to fix you right up.” Rose replied, smiling encouragingly.

Astra gained a hopeful note. “And my people? Can it help them, too?”

Rose swallowed. “Yeah. Yeah, it can.” Or, at least, the Doctor could. She had gleaned enough from his and Romana’s discussions that the war should not have happened, and hopefully he and the TARDIS could somehow repair the damaged Timeline.

“Good.” She seemed to regain some strength and took a bit more of her own weight. “Then do not mind me. We must hurry.”

~*~

Romana had the tracer out as they made their way back to the military base, growing more and more concerned when the tracer remained silent. It was becoming apparent that the final segment had been taken with Rose and Astra.

“What are you doing?” Merak finally asked, when they had travelled for some time in silence.

Romana glanced at the Doctor; he was striding ahead of them, jaw set and eyes distant. Had she not known better, she would guess he was trying to get a read on Rose’s Timelines. Romana had tried several times before but they always remained elusive, playing catch-me-if-you-can along the periphery of her senses. “Looking for something,” she finally answered, as the Doctor removed the key from his pocket to fiddle with it.

“Looking for what?” Merak asked, curious.

“I wish I knew,” she sighed. “All I know is that this will tell us when we find it.”

Merak looked down at the circlet he had refused to let go of. “And that’s why you’re here?”

“Yes,” Romana replied, wondering where this was going.

“Not to help us?”

Romana turned to look at him, trying to remain civil even though she was aggravated with the Doctor’s attitude and worried about Rose. “ Look, we will if we can. You’ll just have to trust us, Merak. Will you?”

“What else can I do?” Merak replied bitterly.

She considered for a moment, remembering how the tracer had gone off when Astra was behind the doors, and didn’t when she had been moved. “Tell me, apart from that circlet that Astra wears, is there anything else that she always wears or carries?”

“Not that I can think of, no,” Merak replied, sounding puzzled. “Then again, I haven’t seen her very often since the War started. The hospital wards required most of my attention.”

The potential possibilities were grim. “I see,” she replied, and hurried after the Doctor. She didn’t know if he was drawing the same conclusions as her or not, but it was better for them to be on the same page. Lack of communication had put them in tight spots, and it wasn’t a mistake she wanted to make again, especially with Rose missing and a nuclear war going on above their heads..

“Come on!” The Doctor snapped at them, and immediately after they ran into a patrol. Romana glared at him. He was a brilliant man, in his own way, but that did not stop her wondering how he had survived this long.

The guards surrounded them. “Come on, move,” they ordered.

The Doctor did not budge. “Where are we going?”

“The Marshal wants to see you now,” the guard replied, predictably. Beside her, Romana felt Merak slouch in defeat.

“That’s funny, I wanted to see the Marshal!” The Doctor replied cheerfully. “Come on, let’s move.” He led the bewildered guards towards the military hub, as Merak brought up the rear in resignation.

The Doctor was practically skipping by the time they arrived. “So nice of you to invite us back!” he exclaimed to Shapp, who seemed to be in control at the moment. He held out his hand, but Shapp ignored him. “You two,” he said, gesturing at Romana and Merak, “over there. You,” he glared at the Doctor, “come with me.”

The Doctor scrambled up to the platform in the center of the room, nearly climbing over a computer terminal and ignoring the startled technician as he looked around with avid curiosity. “Listen, I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m the Doctor. Who are you?”

He still ignored the proffered hand. “Major Shapp. This way,” he said, and led the Doctor to a small alcove where the Marshal was staring intently at his reflection.

“Ah, Marshal!” The Doctor said, happily, as he walked over to him. “I understand you’ve got a few problems and I was thinking that if you and I got together we, er…” he faltered as the Marshal failed to respond and continued staring at his reflection. “Marshal? Marshal?” He peered over the man’s shoulder and into the mirror, then turned to Shapp. “Is he all right?”

“Shh,” Shapp said, nervously, then pulled the Doctor away. “He’s meditating.”

The Doctor looked confused. “What? Does he do it often?”

“When things are not going well.” Shapp confessed. “He makes most of his decisions this way.”

“No wonder thing’s aren’t going well.” The Doctor scoffed. “Standing in front of a mirror gimbling and smiling at himself like that is the first sign of megalomania!” He paused, then turned back to Shapp. “He’s not a ventriloquist, is he?” He whispered, nervously.

Shapp looked confused. “A what?”

“A ventriloquist. A chap who throws his voice, you know.” He mimed the action. “Throws his voice. Has a dummy. Operates a dummy. A dummy.” Something sparked in his mind- a memory, from a previous life. He had just regenerated, and been thrust into a plot where the Autons were trying to take over Earth. Their leader had led an army of Autons, disguised as shop window dummies, and communicated via telepathy. Oh, Rose would have smacked him for not seeing it sooner! “A dummy. A dummy, of course!” He groaned. Whoever the Marshal was, he wasn’t himself. He had yet to figure out who was the puppet and who was the puppeteer, of course, but he would bet his scarf that someone else was pulling the Marshal’s strings.

Beside him, Shapp snapped to military attention, and the Doctor turned to see the Marshal standing behind them and smiling. Odd, he thought, but greeted him anyway. “Ah, Marshal,” he said, cheerfully. Best not let him know his suspicions.

“Welcome, my friend!” The Marshal said, surprising everyone in the room. The Doctor replayed the events since he had left; nothing came to mind that would have caused the Marshal to suddenly like him. Maybe the puppet had received new directions?

“Friend? The last time I came here, you wanted to shoot me.” The Doctor pointed out. He really didn’t want to remind the man, but he was confused as to the sudden 180 turn.

The Marshal replied graciously. “A misunderstanding. I apologise.”

From the sidelines, Romana watched suspiciously. The Doctor’s mind had plainly been busy ever since he saw the Marshal standing at the mirror, and though his face was blank his eyes burned with a checked firestorm. She wished he had been paying attention during his school years because every time she tried to make contact she simply bounced off his mind’s barriers. Granted, she had never really tried communicating with him like this before, so he likely wasn’t expecting it, but she could only knock politely so many times before she had to start ringing the doorbell.

On the outside, at least, he appeared relaxed, if not a little smug. “Ah, well, fancy you mistaking me for a Zeon. Really, Marshal.”

“I had forgotten,” the Marshal replied, and Romana saw the tension creep back into the Time Lord.

“Forgotten?” The Doctor asked, politely.

“That you had been foretold. Your coming had been foretold.” The Marshal declared.

Alarm bells began ringing in the Doctor’s mind as he let her in the smallest amount, and Romana was too startled by the sudden contact that she didn’t even reply. “We had? You mean that we were expected?”

Romana stared as the meaning became clear, and the Doctor sent her a quick summary of the events taking place after he had been banished from Gallifrey- along with an image of the Black Guardian. Astra wasn’t the trap- Atrios itself was.

The Marshal didn’t seem to be picking up on the two Gallifreyan’s emotional turmoil. “It’s the war. This endless war occupied my thoughts to the exclusion of all else.”

“Yes,” the Doctor said, quietly, thinking of how he had probably let Rose fall into the hands of the enemy while he had been distracted. “I understand how you feel.”

Romana easily sensed his thoughts now that he had marginally opened his shields to her, and she practically screamed at him to get himself together before he gave them up. “Now that you are here, you are the one!” The Marshal exclaimed, and the Doctor finally seemed to snap out of it. He threw Romana violently out of his mind, leaving her reeling.

“I am! Am I?” he replied, blinking at the Marshal.

The Marshal beamed. “The one who will lead us to victory!”

“Oh, good-o!” The Doctor exclaimed, although he was still unsettled. “As long as there’s no personal risk involved, of course.” He looked at the Marshal intently, as if daring him to confess what was really going on.

The Marshal, however, was staring off into the future, a wild glint in his eyes. “To halt the hated Zeons in their tracks, wipe their presence from our skies, and free this land, this world, this Atrios!”

“This blessed plot!” The Doctor added cheerfully. Every pep talk could do with a little Shakespeare, after all.

The Marshal didn’t even falter. “Good, good! This blessed plot from the terrors of war and the evils of pestilence.”

“Yes!” The Doctor cheered, then frowned. “No, I prefer the original,” he said matter-of-factly.

The Marshal merely smiled. “You, Doctor, you shall give us our victory.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Yes. But, before I do, what happens if I don’t?”

“The question doesn’t arise,” The Marshal shrugged.

“Oh well, I’m very grateful for your confidence, Marshal. I’ll see what I can manage. Er,” he gestured at Romana and Merak, “we’re not under arrest, then?”

The Marshal laughed. “Oh, my dear Doctor.”

Romana had to catch Merak when he nearly fainted from relief. A surgeon the boy may be, but a war-hardened soldier he was not. “Listen, I shall need to know the situation. The basic situation.” The Doctor told the Marshal, and he agreed. He invited the Doctor to join him, and the Time Lord instantly plopped down into the command chair. He was still trying to push the Marshal’s buttons, trying to get him to the point where he might expose himself, but the man simply took it in stride.

“Now, Doctor,” the Marshal said, “you shall see the mighty battlefield of Atrios, the weapons that are available to you.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Astra have a heart-to-heart, and the Doctor undergoes a rescue attempt.

Rose’s progress was slow, since Astra was still suffering from nausea and migraines. She tried not to let her worry show, but the trip to the teleport was taking much longer than she had estimated. The blank, dark corridor stretched endlessly in front of her, and Rose knew that it should have only taken a minute or so to get there. They had been walking for at least five, and the corridor that led to the teleport was no where to be seen.

“Did we…” Astra shuddered as she tried to hold back another surge of pain. “Did we miss the turn?”

Rose swallowed. “No. I think…” she looked behind them, seeing that their cell was still the same distance from them that it was the last time she had checked. “I think that we’re caught in a time bubble.”

Astra blinked. “What?”

“It’s… think of a snow globe.” Rose explained. “When you shake it, the snow moves and floats to the bottom, but unless you move it again the snow stays where it has fallen. It’s the same way in a time bubble. Unless someone comes along and re-starts time, we’re stuck where we are, just like the snow.”

They had stopped walking, and Astra leaned heavily on the wall. “So we’re at the mercy of our captor.”

Rose nodded. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “If my friends were here, they’d know how to get out- they understand Time much better than I do, can even manipulate it on a small level.”

Astra looked at her. “You miss them.”

“Yeah.” She sat down, and Astra joined her. “I do. Romana, she’s- she’s a Time Lady, all proper and brilliant and a real match for the Doctor in intelligence, but I can already tell she’s learned so much from him despite getting better grades. And the Doctor, he’s…” She smiled wistfully. “I love him. I can never tell him, of course, because he isn’t like that, but.” Rose shrugged. “He knows. I know he does. And we only just gave in to our feelings, and he now realized that letting me in won’t change anything. We’re so new and so old at the same time, it’s scary, but I can never regret it.” At Astra’s look, Rose ducked her head. “Our life, it’s dangerous. We take a stand because no one else will, and I’ve almost died so many times now. It’s terrifying and wonderful and I can’t imagine my life being any different. I’ve seen so many things out there that will give the most bravest man nightmares, but I’ve seen moments of beauty that still bring tears to my eyes. It’s a better way of living my life, and it was because of the Doctor that I learned it doesn’t matter what you are, it’s who you are that makes you special.”

Astra was quiet. “I’ve done so much for my people,” she finally said. “Ever since I was born, I was raised to put my world before my own needs. And then Zeos attacked and I felt like a failure. Everything I had ever done was ruined, and in the moment of my people’s greatest need I couldn’t do anything. I tried begging for peace, but Zeos didn’t respond; and then I confided Merak while visiting the hospital and he was everything I never knew I needed. He listened to me, gave me strength, told me not to give up. And I felt guilty. I rejected his advances because I felt like giving in would make me a bad princess. How could I be selfish and accept his love when my people were suffering? He understood, but…” she sighed. “And I might never see him again. I wish I could have told him that I feel the same.”

Rose laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not wrong to be selfish sometimes, Astra. Everyone needs to lean on others; no one can do it alone. Eventually you would have broken, and then where would your world be?”

Astra looked at her. “Do you think we’ll ever get back?”

“Yes,” she replied firmly. “You know why? Because so long as the Doctor’s alive, I am going to get back to him, and so long as we’re apart, he’ll fight to get back to me. The universe will try to split us up, but it never, ever will.” Rose stood, offering Astra her hand. “We’ll find a way to escape. Just because we haven’t yet doesn’t mean we can’t. Atrios needs you, Princess. And you need Merak.”

Astra gripped Rose’s hand. “I’ve never given up before. Why start now?”

“That’s the spirit!” Rose said, and this time when they moved forward, Astra walked on her own.

~*~

Romana and the Doctor watched in dawning horror as, on the screen, Atrios’s ships fell one by one. A group of a dozen faced off against at least fifty other ships, and had anyone been able to be on the surface of the planet they would have seen massive explosions in the sky as, one by one, Atrios’s remaining army fell.

“Pull them out,” the Marshal finally said, as the frantic cries and death screams came over the speakers. His face was utterly blank, and cold fury rolled off of him in waves. Romana, remembering how he had mistaken one of his own men for the enemy and cheered when they were killed, didn’t feel the slightest amount of sympathy for him. For his men, definitely; all she could feel for the Marshal was pity that he was so consumed with the delusion of glory that he couldn’t see that he was losing.

“Three ships left out of a once proud battlefleet of hundreds.” The Marshal said softly. “Three. You see now why we need your help. We must have the weapon that will wipe the Zeons clear of our skies once and for all. Can you provide it?”

The Doctor was still staring at the screen. “Yes, I think so.”

A glint manifested in the Marshal’s eyes. “What is it?”

“Peace,” the Doctor said, simply.

The Marshal wasn’t amused. “Very funny. How can we have peace until we have the ultimate deterrent that will ensure a lasting peace?”

The Doctor stood, staring down at him. “Tell me, Marshal. If you had this ultimate deterrent, what would you do?”

“Use it, of course.” The Marshal said as if there wasn’t any other option. “Make sure it works.”

Disappointed, the Doctor shook his head. “Yes, well, you have a true military mind, Marshal.”

“Thank you,” the Marshal said, sounding proud.

The Doctor thought for a moment. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You help me find the s…” the sudden panic from Romana made him realize he almost let their secret slip. He paused, and continued carefully. “You help me find the Princess Astra and I’ll knock you up a deterrent. How’s that?”

The Marshal didn’t even hesitate. “I like you, Doctor,” he smiled. “I like you very much.”

The Doctor shifted, uneasily. “Well, I hope I can live up to your expectations, then.”

The Doctor started to step off the platform, and the Marshal followed him. “I am certain you will. Are you certain, Doctor?” His smile remained in place.

For every step the Doctor took it was echoed by the Marshal. “Oh yes, I think I can do something for you.” The Doctor replied, nervously.

“It will be the ultimate deterrent,” the Marshal continued.

“Oh, it will be, it will be. A sort of… parasol affair.” The Doctor said, waving his arms about.

The Marshal finally stopped his advance, the Doctor’s admission taking him by surprise. “What?”

“Well, a sort of umbrella forcefield, you know, that no Zeon ship can penetrate.” The Doctor said, smiling winningly. Romana thought it made him look a little mad.

The Doctor inched towards Romana, and the Marshal circled him. “Oh, so we can attack, they can’t retaliate.”

“Well, not quite.” The Doctor scrambled to continue his improvisation. “I mean, they can’t get in but you can’t get out.”

The Marshal narrowed his eyes and once more the Doctor was being backed into a corner- literally and figuratively. “Then how do we win?”

“Well,” the Doctor spluttered.

The Marshal’s voice was filled with a lust for power. “We must have victory!”

“There’s always a snag,” the Doctor said, managing to maneuver himself so that he once again had a clear shot to the door. “But I’ll work on it. Look, I’ll need K9.”

The Marshal squinted. “K9?”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes, my computer. The one you thought was a weapon.”

Though he looked furious, he looked at his second-in-command. “Well, Shapp?”

Shapp looked uncomfortable, but replied anyway. “It’s too late, sir. It’s on the way to the furnace.”

The Doctor whirled to look at him. “Furnace? What furnace?”

“Recycling,” Shapp replied apologetically. “We recycle all scrap.”

“Scrap!” the Doctor looked- and sounded- furious. “Where is this furnace?!”

Shapp pointed, and the Doctor hurried after him. He opened the maintenance shaft and dove in, much to the Marshal’s alarm. “Does this a lot, then?” Shapp asked Romana, calmly.

“More than you know,” she said ruefully, and they shared sympathetic looks.

As the Doctor crawled through the shaft to get K9, the Marshal was pacing anxiously. “Shut down the furnace,” he said angrily.

“I already have, sir,” Shapp replied.

“The Doctor must not die!” The Marshal snapped, then added, quietly, “Not yet.”

Romana looked at him sharply. He seemed to have forgotten about her presence, since he hadn’t said one word to her or Merak, who looked like he would rather be anywhere but there. Since he still had patients to take care of, it seemed cruel to keep him away, but the Marshal had made it abundantly clear that winning was all he cared about.

Shapp and the Marshal continued to bicker, but the Marshal suddenly broke off from the argument and tugged at his collar, accidentally revealing a small, black device on his neck. From the flicker of pain that crossed his features it wasn’t pleasant, but he quickly hid it again. Romana looked away, pretending she hadn’t noticed.

The door suddenly opened with a hiss and a billow of smoke. Romana waved it away, and sighed in relief. “Oh, K9, you’re alright!” she cooed, as the Doctor emerged, K9 under one arm.

“Affirmative, mistress,” K9 replied, though he still sounded a bit fried.

The Doctor was standing arrogantly, as if he had just conquered Rome. “Warm for the time of the year.” He said, conversationally, as if he hadn’t been nearly burned. Romana saw that the ends of his scarf were still smoking. “It’s a little trick I picked up from the fire-walkers in Bali. They do it all the time.” He patted K9 on the muzzle. “Come on, old boy!”

They made the short walk back to the control area, and the Doctor placed K9 down on the floor as he fussed over him. “Not even singed,” the Marshal said in disbelief as the Doctor collapsed into the command chair once again. “My apologies, Doctor.”

“Oh, that’s all right. We all make mistakes sometimes, don’t we, K9?” the Doctor asked.

K9 was still smoking. “Negative,” the robotic dog replied, pertly. Romana smothered a laugh.

The Doctor looked weary. “Yes, now listen, Marshal. If you’re going to insist we do this your way…”

“I do,” the Marshal interrupted, stiffly.

“I thought you might.” The Doctor paused, then sat up. “Now listen,” he said, and began gesturing with his hands, “If we’re going to set up a one-way forcefield, one that keeps the Zeons out but allows you to pass through it to attack them-” he mimed a ship crossing the barrier- “we’re going to have to get to know our enemy, so to speak.”

The Marshal looked wary. “What do you mean?”

“I was thinking in terms of a psychological barrier.” The Doctor replied cheerily. “It’s cheap, efficient, and energy saving. It would stop the Zeons wanting to come here. Introduce an element of Atrophobia?” he said, grinning and sending a meaningful look at Romana.

She played along. “Oh, what a wonderful idea!” she exclaimed.

“Yes, but to that I’d have to meet one, you see, get to know it. Brain patterns, that sort of thing. Isn’t that right, Romana?”

Romana nodded emphatically. “Oh, absolutely. There’s no other way.”

The Doctor looked at the Marshal pleadingly. “Now, Marshal, can you arrange that?”

“No,” he replied, sounding regretful.

The Doctor continued, desperately. “Look, it doesn’t have to be anything particularly intelligent. Any prisoner would do.”

The Marshal shook his head. “There are no prisoners. This is war to the death. Like us, the Zeon warriors are sworn to destroy themselves. Death before dishonour!”

Clearly disappointed, the Doctor settled back in the chair. “Well, if you can’t find me a Zeon, I’ll have to think of something else.”

“Time is running short, Doctor,” The Marshal said curtly.

Romana raised an eyebrow. “How right you are.” For him and for them.

~*~

Despite trying different hallways and even retracing their steps, Rose couldn’t find a way to break the time bubble. There was always a weak spot, she explained, but finding it was the difficult part. If it was made by someone who understood Time, the weak spot would be invisible, even microscopic. Otherwise it could be something as simple as a brick or a doorknob. The Doctor had even accidentally broken one by playing a specific chord progression on his recorder.

“How well made do you think it is?” Astra asked as they came across their open cell door yet again. She rubbed her wrists absently, and Rose fingered the jewelry in her pocket. Astra had given them to her for safe-keeping since no one would suspect Rose’s pockets of being able to hold so much. Though Rose highly doubted their captors wanted Astra’s wealth, she didn’t want to worry her more than possible.

Rose sighed. “Judging from the radius of the bubble and how long it takes us to traverse it, I say pretty well made. A bubble of this size takes massive amounts of energy to generate and lots of temporal shielding to keep it stable, so we’re up against someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“So we’re not going to be able to escape,” Astra surmised.

“I don’t think so,” Rose said, dejectedly. “And since our transport is buried behind a cave-in, my friends are probably still stuck on Atrios.”

Astra leaned against the wall. “They clearly want us alive, though, whoever took us. Why go through this much effort otherwise?”

Rose stayed silent, not wanting Astra to know that she was probably the main target- Rose was a spare, probably only taken because she had seen Astra’s kidnapper. “Well, while we’re here,” Rose asked, “what’s so special about K block?”

“Pardon?”

“Why were you trapped in K block?”

Astra sighed. “I assume it was because the Marshal no longer has any need for me. He ordered my escort to lock me in there, and if it weren’t for this, I’d probably be dead.” She gestured around the damp hallway for emphasis.

“Or maybe he trapped you in there because of this,” Rose said slowly. “There was a functioning teleport hidden on the other side of the wall; something that wasn’t built in the span of a few minutes. Could the Marshal have made a deal with someone to enable him to win the war in exchange for you?”

Astra looked troubled. “I wouldn’t put it past him. Ever since the beginning, his obsession for victory has been put above all else.” She sighed. “We didn’t even see the first attack coming. One moment, we were celebrating the spring festival, and the next, three cities had been utterly destroyed. We fled to the old mine shafts, and expanded upon them since then.”

“Did you find anything while digging? A strange artefact, maybe?”

The princess looked confused, but shook her head. “No. It used to be silver mines, but they ran out long ago, in my grandparent’s time. K block used to house medical supplies, but once the radiation leak happened we had to abandon them all. Why?”

Rose shook her head. “Nothing. Just curious.”

They were silent for a while. “Where do you come from, Rose?” Astra finally asked. “I know my people well, yet I have never seen you before. How did you manage to arrive on Atrios?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Rose laughed. “But we’re travellers. We were looking for something that was lost, and we tracked it to your world. But before we could locate it, the Doctor and Romana were arrested by the Marshal, and I, well, we, were kidnapped.”

“What were you looking for?” Astra asked.

Rose shrugged. “We don’t know. We had this device that would have told us when we found it. All we knew was that the signal was coming from K block.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” she apologized.

Rose shook her head. “It isn’t your fault. It’s…” she tensed. “Did you hear that?”

They were silent, and Astra was about to question Rose when a sound reached her ears- footsteps. “Run!” Rose hissed, and Astra scrambled up. They raced down the hallway, Astra stumbling as she forced back the nausea. Rose whooped in delight when she discovered the time bubble had broken, but when she turned into the hallway hosting the teleport, she ran into a solid object that was blocking their path.

Astra looked fearfully at the person dressed all in black as she helped Rose to her feet. “Come with me,” it said, and they had no choice but to obey when they saw the laser gun in his hands.

~*~

“Any news of Astra?” Romana asked after the Marshal’s announcement.

The Marshal broke off from his staring contest with the Doctor. “Intelligence reports suggest that she’s been abducted by Zeons. If that’s the case then I’m afraid…”

Though the Doctor’s outwardly appearance didn’t shift with the news, Romana knew that he was thinking of Rose. “Marshal,” he interrupted, “will you excuse us please?”

They moved off as the Marshal and Shapp discussed battle strategies. “Doctor,” Romana said quietly, “when you went into the furnace after K9, the Marshal almost went berserk at the thought you might be killed.”

He blinked. “Really? How considerate of him.”

She shook her head. “No, it wasn’t. Because what he said was, the Doctor must not die. Not yet.”

She noticed Merak out of the corner of her eye, but continued recounting her side of the events. “And listen, I saw something at his throat like a little black cylinder. It seemed to be controlling him.”

“Then the Marshal is the puppet after all.” The Doctor mused. “So, who is controlling him? Our mutual friend or someone else? And who’s behind the mirror he keeps looking at?”

Merak clearly had enough. “Questions and questions but no answers,” he said, angrily, as they shushed him. “We’re no closer to finding Astra or whatever it is you’re looking for. Well, are we?”

The Doctor looked at him sadly. “Merak, I believe we’re closer to finding Princess Astra than we realise. What worries me is, are we supposed to?”

“You really think she…?” Romana asked, quietly, and the Doctor nodded at her. Troubled, Romana stepped away.

“We need to find out who is pulling the wool over who’s eyes. Are we supposed to fall for the Marshal’s bluff or is he supposed to fall for ours?”

Merak shook his shoulder impatiently. “Listen, Doctor, you said a minute ago that we were close to finding Astra. Please tell me where she is or where you think she is.”

The Doctor gave a frustrated sigh. “It wouldn’t make any difference. Even if I told you, you couldn’t reach her!” he said angrily.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Because I think Astra is on Zeos,” the Doctor replied.

Romana shook her head. “Doctor, you’re forgetting something. We haven’t been able to locate Zeos, not from the TARDIS or from anywhere.”

The Doctor looked at her, askance. “Zeos is there alright, you just can’t see it.”

“Why not?” Romana demanded. He was keeping things from her again. Except for that one rare moment he had let down his shields in his worry about Rose, he had remained frustratingly blank since then.

He stepped back and placed his hand in front of him, obscuring his face. “Can you see me now?” he asked. At her negative response, he asked, “why not?”

“Because your hands in…” she started, exasperated, then broke off as his meaning became clear. “Oh… you mean there’s something between us and Zeos.”

He grinned at her. “Right.”

Everything became clearer now. “That would account for the orbital shift. But why can’t we see we see whatever is in the way?” She mused.

“Because it’s absorbing the light or energy!” He replied, then paused. “Or else it’s camouflage,” he muttered.

At his look Romana grew concerned. “Yes?”

He dismissed his previous train of thought. “No, no, no. Maybe it’s large! Or perhaps it’s small…”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked, truly puzzled now.

“How could Columbus be sure?” he asked, apropos of nothing.

Romana stared at him. “Who?”

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

Merak butted in. “But Astra said she couldn’t get a signal back from Zeos. Where do we start?”

The Doctor looked at him appraisingly before motioning Romana to get closer. “Behind that mirror over there. There’s bound to be another entrance.” He whispered. “You and Romana go over there and see what you can find.”

Romana led Merak toward the mirror, pretending to speak with him urgently as the Marshall turned their way. Apparently another strike was underway, but this time there was nothing to counter-attack with. They quickly hurried into the small alcove while the Marshal and Shapp were distracted.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was reading a printout that K9 had produced after a quick and quiet conversation. “Can we have that forcefield now?” The Marshal demanded. “We’ve committed everything. We’re being obliterated. We’ve nothing left. It’s our last hope!”

“No, no, no, no. I’ve worked it all out,” the Doctor replied. “The problem is energy. If we’re using energy to neutralise mass, which is all a forcefield is, we need enough energy or power energy-wise to counteract the Zeon bombardment mass-wise.”

The Marshal replied swiftly. “I’ll give you absolute energy priority.”

The Doctor shook his head. “It won’t work. Look, K9’s worked it all out,” he said, showing the Marshal the printout.

“Affirmative.” K9 said. “The more you use, the more you need. You’d have to consume the whole of Atrios to give it an effective forcefield.”

“Which rather defeats the purpose,” the Doctor shrugged.

The Marshal looked at him blankly. “Why?”

“Because you wouldn’t have a planet to live on,” the Doctor replied, as if wondering how idiotic the Marshal truly was.

The man looked resigned. “Then we are defenseless.”

“No, no, not quite, not quite.” The Doctor assured him. “You remember I mentioned a psychological barrier, a deterrent that no Zeon would cross?”

“Yes, but you need Zeons to experiment on.” The Marshal replied, confused.

The Doctor frowned. “No, I think I said examined.”

Frustrated, the Marshal looked ready to call it quits. “There are no Zeons!”

“There are on Zeos,” the Doctor reminded him.

The Marshal eyed him suspiciously. “What exactly are you proposing?”

“I go to Zeos, pick up a Zeon, and bring the Princess Astra back if she’s there.” He replied, simply.

“Incoming transmission!” A technician cried out, startled. “They hijacked the signal!”

Everyone stared nervously at the viewscreen. On it appeared an image of Princess Astra. She was looking the worse for wear, pale and disheveled, but she stood tall and firm. “People of Atrios, lay down your arms.” she implored. “Surrender. Resistance is useless. The Zeons can never be defeated. They have taken me captive.” Astra paused, as if regaining her breath. “My people, my people, they have sworn to destroy Atrios unless you surrender now. If you love me, my people, save me. Save yourselves. Hand over the Marshal and surrender. Surrender now. The war is over. The Zeons…”

The screen abruptly cut off as the Marshal pulled the plug. “This forcefield,” he said, angrily. “Can you provide it now? Will it give us breathing space?”

The Doctor looked shocked, but quickly recovered. “Yes, it’ll give you time to save your neck.”

His words, deliberately chosen, struck a nerve with the Marshal. He placed his hand where the Doctor assumed the device was, and went over to the mirror. The Doctor followed him. “Well?”

“You may go to Zeos,” the Marshal finally said. “There is a way.”

~*~

There was a small duct that seemed to lead into the room behind the mirror, and after making sure the Marshal and Shapp were occupied, Romana and Merak quickly slipped inside. It was slow going, since the duct warped under their hands and knees, but they eventually made it to the small room. Dominating one wall was the other side of the mirror, and in the center of the room was an amber skull on a pedestal.

“It’s the Marshal,” Merak whispered, helping Romana from the vent. She shushed him, and they stayed against the wall as the Marshal turned back to the mirror after watching the Doctor leave.

“It’s done. The Time Lord suspects nothing. I’ve directed him to the transmat point in K block where your agents will be waiting.” The Marshal said.

Romana paled. “Time Lord; how does he know?”

“What?” Merak asked, and she quieted him again. She didn’t know what the Marshal could hear, and Merak didn’t seem to know what ‘subtlety’ required.

Luckily the Marshal didn’t seem to hear them. “My lord, once you have the secrets of time, please, give me my victory. I’ve waited so long. Please, my lord.” He pleaded, desperately. He didn’t seem like the strong, arrogant man that he had been. Instead he seemed like a man on the verge of collapse- which, Romana figured, he was. The Princess had just asked her people to arrest him, the war was all but lost, and his life’s work was slipping through his fingers.

“He said K block,” Merak whispered. “Astra was in K block.”

Romana blinked. “And so was Rose.” She turned back to the ventilation shaft. “We’d better warn the Doctor. Come on.”

~*~

“You know, K9, I’ve got a feeling we’re missing out on something.” The Doctor mused as they made their way back to K block. When the robotic dog didn’t respond, he looked down at him with a frown. “Are you listening to me, K9?”

“Master,” K9 replied, and the Doctor wondered if he detected a hint of sarcasm. He really needed to give K9 an upgrade when they finished this quest.

He crouched down to K9’s level. “Listen. Why should the Marshal, leader in a war against Zeos, be the only one to know of a transmatter link with the enemy planet? Located in the exact place where Rose and Astra went missing? And why should he tell me? I think one of us is being extremely stupid.”

“Affirmative,” K9 said, and the Doctor stared at him some more. Definitely sarcasm.

The wall where he had found Rose’s key slid open ominously when the Doctor approached. He stared at it for a moment, then squared his shoulders. “Well, good luck, K9. I hope to see you again soon.”

“Master,” K9 said, “I do not advise entry of that-”

The Doctor placed his hand over K9’s muzzle in order to quiet him. “K9,” He said firmly, “can I take the decisions, please?” When the dog remained silent, he patted him fondly. “See you soon,” he repeated, then stepped onto the transmat.

Romana, followed by Merak, arrived just as the doors were closing. “Doctor, wait!” she shouted, only to find the wall closed. “Oh no,” she groaned. “K9, how could you let him? It was a trap!”

On the other side of the wall, the Doctor blinked. “A trap?” he asked, only to be grabbed roughly by two masked figures. He sighed. Really, he should be used to these things by now.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, the Doctor meets his enemy face-to-face, and Astra gets a shock.

“What is the Doctor doing in there?” Merak asked, when Romana finally stopped trying to get the wall open.

She sighed. “Going to Zeos, I should think. K9, can you open it?”

“Negative.” the dog replied reluctantly.

Merak looked confused. “What do you mean? It’s just a room.”

“It’s not just a room, Merak, it’s a transmat point,” she replied.

He didn’t seem to understand. “Transmat?"

Romana looked at him, wondering about how far the war had set back Atrios’ education and technology. Transmats existed at least fifty years ago in Atrios’ history, and he should have at least known about them. She knew the Timelines on this planet were a mess, but this was a whole new level. “Short for particle matter transmission. I’ll explain it to you another time when I’ve got at least two weeks to spare,” she added, dismissively.

“You think Zeons captured the Doctor as well?” Merak asked.

She nodded. “Yes, I should think so.” While he was asking the right questions, she really needed to find a way to rescue the Doctor. His questions were distracting, to say the least.

“So they’ve got Astra?” he worried, fiddling once more with the circlet.

Romana nodded. “And Rose. Come on, we shall have to try the TARDIS. Let’s go, K9.”

She made K9 analyze the rubble so that they can better shift it and prevent a further cave-in. Merak looked like he was bursting with questions, but he refrained, watching as K9 worked. Romana paced nearby. “What’s the matter, K9? Hurry!” She said, as the robot dog didn’t move.

“Haste unnecessary, Mistress.” K9 replied. “Sensors indicate the TARDIS is missing.”

Romana looked at K9, horrified. “What?” How could this be possible? she wondered. No one knew about the TARDIS, it had been buried moments after their arrival, and the rubble hadn’t shifted so they couldn’t have dug it out.

What’s worse, with the TARDIS gone, it meant she was stranded on Atrios. Rose and the Doctor were likely being held captive, and while it meant the Doctor would at least be a bit less high-strung and thinking more clearly with Rose safe, it also meant that she didn’t have backup should things go awry. The Marshal wanted the Doctor alive, but that courtesy didn’t extend to her.

“What now?” Merak asked. She wished she knew.

~*~

The Doctor was led to what looked like a control room where someone awaited him, dressed all in black with a half-skull mask obscuring his features. It was all terribly over-dramatic, really, and reminded him of death eaters a little bit. Atrios, however, probably hadn’t heard of Harry Potter, so he held his tongue. Despite Romana’s- and Rose’s- belief, he really did know when to keep silent.

“Place the control device,” the masked man ordered, and one of the lackeys that was holding him did so. It stung, a little, and he could feel the device trying to access the telepathic centers of his brain- but his shields, not to mention his mental capabilities, were a lot stronger than the basic mind control device. It was almost too easy to block the signal.

“Now, Doctor, you are completely in my power” the masked man said, ominously.

He raised his eyebrows. “Really?” It was easy to remove the device now that it was no longer transmitting. “Do you mean because of that?”

The masked man was plainly startled, and the Doctor hid a smirk. He dropped the device and crushed it, and willingly followed his ‘guards’ to a small alcove and sat in the chair. He was, of course, caged almost immediately, but he instantly spotted five ways to escape, including fitting between the bars themselves. “Now do you hear me, Doctor?” the masked man asked.

It was a curious thing; his voice reverberated a little, and it took the Doctor a moment to realize why- he was speaking with his voice and mind. With his shields the Doctor couldn’t have heard him clearly, but he was reluctantly impressed- it took a lot of dedication and skill to do both at once, and if you weren’t a particularly strong telepath to begin with, it was near impossible. “Yes.” he finally replied. “Yes I hear you. Who are you?”

“I am the Shadow. Your adversary, shall we say. It is not important.” The masked man- well, the Shadow, he supposed- stepped closer. “You come in quest of a key.”

The Doctor eyed him. It wasn’t that much of a surprise, that the Shadow knew- Atrios had the black guardian’s fingerprints all over it, and if the Shadow’s attire hadn’t clued him in, that last phrase certainly would have. “Yes,” he admitted, knowing it probably wouldn’t be in his best interest to lie.

“The Key to Time, as it’s called,” the Shadow elaborated.

“Yeees,” he replied, wondering where the conversation was going.

“You are in possession of certain elements of that key?” was the next question, and his hands tightened on the bars.

“No!” he replied, only to get shocked by a mild electrical charge. Ah. So that’s why the room was lined with metal- he had seen worse torture chambers, though, and his body could withstand much, much worse. And Rose wondered why he wore so many layers.

“I warn you, Doctor,” the Shadow growled. “If you lie, the pain will increase. Where are they?”

The Doctor willed his heartbeat to stay steady, and kept his breaths regular. He knew how to cheat a lie detector. “I don’t know,” he replied, and was shocked when the electricity coursed through him again.

“Where are they?” the Shadow demanded once more.

The Doctor thought of Astra. “Lost,” he replied, and flinched slightly. This time, however, he analyzed where the electricity was coming from, and realized that the room had telepathic receptors- nothing invasive, but it was picking up on his brain waves to see if he was lying or not. Given time and meditation he could outsmart them, but time was something he suspected he was running out of. The Shadow didn’t seem like a particularly patient fellow.

“Open your eyes, Doctor,” the Shadow commanded. He did so reluctantly. A corner of the room lit up, revealing the TARDIS. “Are they in there?” The Shadow asked.

Though the Shadow having the TARDIS was slightly terrifying, he also knew that it didn’t know what the TARDIS was. “Yes,” the Doctor admitted, since lying would only prevent him access to the TARDIS.

“Then you will open it,” the Shadow ordered.

The Doctor feigned defeat. “Yes.” He repeated. The more the Shadow had reason to believe he had broken the Doctor, the easier the escape will be.

To his relief the Shadow turned towards the guards. “Release him.”

~*~

With no other options, Romana went back to the teleport. “Right. We’ll just have to work out a way how to get into the transmat shaft. Any ideas, K9?”

“Mistress?” K9 asked. “I detect a locking mechanism, but it is complex. It will take time.”

“As quickly as you can, K9,” Romana replied as K9 began to work.

“The bombing has stopped,” Merak said, suddenly. “Now that means the Zeons know that we’re done for.” he added, dejectedly.

Romana remembered the Marshal’s desperation in the control room and the complete defeat of the remaining army. “Probably,” she agreed, gently.

“Then why capture Astra?” He wondered.

Romana knew, of course, but she didn’t want to break the poor boy’s heart. “Because she’s somehow involved with what we’re looking for,” Romana said, deciding that a half-truth was better than nothing.

“Almost finished, Mistress,” K9 announced.

Merak groaned. “Oh, this is hopeless. We’ve no idea where to look.”

“Yes we have,” Romana reassured him, showing him the tracer. “This will tell us which direction she’s in and how close.

“I see,” he replied, quietly. She hoped it gave him some comfort.

K9 finished. “Ready, Mistress,” He said, moving away as the wall opened.

“Well done, K9!” Romana praised him. Engrossed in the robotic dog, she didn’t have time to react when Merak lunged forward and ripped the tracer from her grasp.

“I’m sorry, Romana!” Merak said, and ran onto the transport. She rushed to stop him, but the wall closed before she was able.

“Oh you stupid, stupid boy!” Romana exclaimed.

K9 joined her. “Do you wish me to reopen the teleport, Mistress?”

Romana sighed. “Yes please, K9. And stick with me. We don’t know what we’ll find there.”

“Affirmative,” K9 replied. The wall slid open once more, and they swiftly left Atrios behind.

They didn’t notice Shapp peering around the corner, watching them.

~*~

Though the Doctor was let free, he wasn’t allowed on the TARDIS. The guards prevented him from getting too close- clearly, the Shadow wasn’t done with him yet. Neither was the TARDIS- She was chiming angrily in his head, exclaiming over what the Shadow’s lackeys had done to Her exterior in their attempt to break in, chiding him for running head-first into danger, and above all else fuming over the fact he had let Rose out of his sight. His ship had always been protective of Rose, but this was something else entirely. He tried soothing Her, but the TARDIS wouldn’t have it. He winced slightly as She threatened to salt his tea for the next three months if he didn’t find Rose now.

“Now your quest is over.” The Shadow announced. “You have something of, shall we say, interest to me in this machine of yours.”

Engrossed as he was in his conversation with the TARDIS, the Doctor nearly didn’t hear him. When he realized the Shadow had spoken he shook himself and focused on his surroundings. “Oh, you mean the TARDIS! Yes, yes, I expected to find that here.” The TARDIS muttered angrily at being referred to as a machine, and didn’t take it kindly when the Doctor reminded Her that She technically was. “Correct me if I’m wrong. This is Zeos, isn’t it?”

“Don’t waste my time,” the Shadow growled.

The Doctor ignored him. “And we came up in the transmat shaft, and then, as they say, everything went black.”

The Shadow clenched his fists. “Open the TARDIS. Bring me the pieces.”

But he had made the foolish mistake of letting the Doctor free, and if there was one thing the Doctor was good at, it was stalling for time by talking. “Certainly. Interested in timepieces, are you? Chronostatics, horogenesis, that sort of thing?” He smiled in what he hoped was a friendly manner.

“You are not dealing with a fool, Doctor,” was the reply.

The Doctor’s smile faded as he turned serious. “Oh yes, I am. I’m sorry to disillusion you, whoever you are. And you tried breaking and entry into my Tardis, didn’t you, and failed.” His tone was mocking. “Covered with automatic defence mechanisms. Very clever, really.”

“Bring me the first five segments of the Key to Time, or I shall destroy you!” The Shadow ordered.

He was surrounded by idiots. Complete and utter idiots. If the Shadow was anything to go by the Doctor finally understood the Marshal’s blind devotion to the war; pride and stubbornness was nothing in the end. The Doctor had overthrown far more clever and dangerous foes. To some, the Shadow was nothing but a schoolyard scrap. “Well, if you do that, you’ll never get them will you?” He pointed out. “And if you let me go in there, there’s no guarantee that I’ll come out, is there? It’s bigger that it looks, you know.” He narrowed his eyes at the Shadow. “And from your demands to get all five pieces, I take it you have the sixth segment.”

The Doctor had either struck a nerve or had been a bit too annoying, because the next order was for him to be destroyed. “Hold it!” He exclaimed, and when the guards didn’t open fire he continued. “There must be some civilised solution to all this without this continued use of brute force.”

“The Key to Time,” The Shadow reminded him.

Well, yes, he did walk right into that one. He heaved a sigh, and started on plan B. “Look, I’d really like to help you, but I’ve got a problem. You see, the thing is, the segments are in there and of course I can go in there, but I can’t bring them out here.”

The Shadow looked suspicious. At least the Doctor assumed he was suspicious. The Doctor was suspicious of himself at times, so the feeling wasn’t new. “Why not?” The Shadow finally asked.

“Well, you see, I’ve built a fail-safe.” He explained, wracking his brain. “The segments are in a sort of limbo closet in, er, in limbo.” The TARDIS snorted at him and he replied with a rude gesture in Gallifreyan. “And the only way to get at them, you see, is with the next piece, so if you’ll just let me have it I’ll pop in there and fetch them for you.”

The Shadow wasn’t impressed. “You think I would trust you?”

“No,” the Doctor admitted. “And I certainly don’t trust you. Bit of an impasse, eh?”

“No, Doctor, there is no real difficulty.” The Shadow replied calmly. “I have waited so long, even another thousand years would be nothing for me. But you, I have watched you and your jackdaw meanderings. I know you and I know there is a want of patience in your nature.”

The Doctor smiled. “That’s right! Fools rush in.”

“Exactly.” The Shadow agreed, and the Doctor let out a small ‘hey!’. “Leave him. He will make his own mistake. Then, Doctor, I shall be waiting.”

The room darkened, and when the lights came back on the Doctor was alone. He was mildly impressed. Teleportation without a conduit? Highly advanced, if a little suicidal.

He started towards the TARDIS, but She slammed a mental ‘Keep Out’ sign in his mind. “Oh, fine,” he grumbled. “I’ll have a look around first, for the sixth segment.”

The TARDIS agreed with him, but he could sense Her worry. He tried to not let it get to him.

~*~

“Stop it!” Rose begged, as Astra was subjected to yet another electrical shock. “She doesn’t know! Torturing her won’t make a difference!”

They had been dragged to this room not long after being discovered, and up until a few minutes ago had been ignored. They had both been chained on different walls, and Rose struggled to go over and help.

“Please,” Astra pleaded. “I don’t know!”

“You must know.” Their captor growled. “You are a daughter of the Royal House of Atrios.”

“Yes, and I tell you, whoever you are, that I’ve never heard of the sixth segment or the sixth anything!” Astra sobbed.

Rose strained against her bonds. “Let her go! I’m the one searching for the segment, I’m of more use!”

“And I tell you, Princess,” their captor sneered as he completely ignored Rose, “that the secret has been passed down through generation after generation of the Royal House, and since you are the sole surviving member of the line, you must know and you will tell me, if I have to tear it from the living fibre of your very being. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Astra replied. “And if I knew, I would tell you!”

Their captor grinned evilly. “You do know, and you will tell me. Since you care so little for your own life, let us see how you care for another.”

A panel near Rose opened to reveal Merak. Rose gasped when she saw that he held the tracer in his hands- the tracer that once belonged to Romana. “No,” she whispered, thinking of what it meant. What if the Doctor and Romana had been hurt? Had the man who had taken them had them executed?

“Merak!” Astra cried out, desperately.

“You fool. Do you think I would leave you on Zeos?” Their captor scoffed. “Shout all you like. You’re not within a million miles of your precious Merak.”

“Not on Zeos?” Rose asked. “Then what is this place?”

“My domain,” their captor replied, and Astra screamed as another current ran through her.

Rose finally had enough. “Stop, stop!” She cried out. “I know where the segment is. I know it!”


	6. Chapter 6

Romana and K9 emerged from the teleport to see an empty hallway, the walls and floors looking the worse for wear. “Come on, K9," she said as she stepped off the platform. She bent down to talk quietly to him. “Listen, I’m going to find Merak and try and get the tracer back. You go find the Doctor, okay?”

K9’s ears wiggled. “Affirmative,” he replied, and rolled off. Romana headed in the opposite direction, following the boot-shaped prints in the dust.

~*~

The Doctor was lost. Not that he would admit it, of course, but he recognized that odd-shaped dent in the wall. It looked a little like a wolf, but the neck was much too small and its ear looked more like a star. A bad wolf dent, really. He decided to go right instead of left, since he had been going in circles.

Seconds later he saw some rather familiar markings. “Romana, Merak, K9,” he muttered, recognizing the footwear. He considered. Since Romana had the tracer she was probably en-route to the segment, which meant K9 was either searching for him or Rose. Either way, it was beneficial to find his pet first, because even if K9 was looking for him, they could find Rose after.

K9’s tracks were hard to follow, so the Doctor was nearly crawling as he followed him. It was a bit of a surprise, then, to see a pair of military boots as he rounded a corner.

“That’s far enough, Doctor. Turn round. Hands in the air. Straighten up, slowly,” Shapp’s voice said.

The Doctor did so, and sighed as Shapp frisked him. “I’m not armed you know.”

Shapp stepped away, and once the Doctor got a good look at him it was clear he was nervous. “All right, what happened?” Shapp demanded. “How did I get here?”

“Well, through the transmat, I imagine,” the Doctor replied.

Shapp looked at him blankly. “Transmat?”

“Yeeees,” the Doctor answered slowly. Surely the people on Atrios knew what a transmat was?

Shapp looked disturbed. “Which section of Atrios is this? I don’t recognise any of it.”

Oh, dear. “Shapp, we’re on Zeos,” the Doctor explained.

“Zeos? How can we be on Zeos?” Shapp demanded. “No, this must be a prohibited area. Section Eleven B. I mean, it must be Atrios.”

How on Earth humans had survived this long with their thick brains, the Doctor would never know. “Shapp, old chap, we’re on Zeos. Listen. No bombardment.”

Shapp scoffed. “Well of course there’s no bombardment. The Zeon fleet have just pulled out.”

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “All right, if we’re on Atrios, where’s the destruction? Look, not a crack. Everything perfect.” He looked around. “Well, a bit dirty.”

Shapp finally looked around, and when he turned back to the Doctor it was clear he was finally seeing. “Where are we?

“On Zeos! Where the Zeons come from,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “But there don’t seem to be many of them about, which is quite good for us.” He continued following K9’s tracks, and Shapp scrambled after him.

“Er, where are you off to?” he asked, gun still in his hands.

“There must be some evidence this way,” the Doctor explained. “Anyway, it’s time I found Rose and Romana.” He draped an arm over Shapp’s shoulder. “Come on. I’ll tell you about the theory of particle transmission,” the Doctor added, cheerfully.

Shapp looked dubious.

~*~

Romana tracked Merak easily, his boot prints easy to follow in the fine dust on the floor. She brushed cobwebs away periodically, wondering how long it had been since anyone had been here. She assumed, from the planetary spin and how far she was away from Gallifrey, that she had been transported to Zeos, but the lack of life around her was disturbing.

There was a faint noise in front of her and Romana picked up her pace. She jumped when Merak leapt out at her, but it was easy to get him in a grip where he was at her mercy. “Let me go! I have to find Astra!” he commanded, struggling.

“Listen, Merak, we all want to find her. Now look, if I let you go, do you promise not to interfere?” Romana asked, applying a bit more pressure.

He nearly collapsed. “Yes!” he gasped, and fell to his knees when Romana released him, tracer in hand. His hand rubbed his shoulder as he got back up. “But I know she’s here,” he said, and winced as he moved his arm.

Romana frowned at him. “How?”

He showed her a bracelet that he had found. “Is that hers?” Romana asked, and at his nod she ran the tracer over it. It buzzed, faintly. “Well, that’s odd,” she mused.

“What is?” Merak asked.

She stared at the tracer. “Earlier, when I ran this over her circlet, there was no response. But now the tracer is saying that this bracelet has had contact with the segment,” she replied absently.

Merak squinted. “What segment?”

Romana mentally shook herself. “Not important. Come on, this could mean that she was leaving us a trail.”

~*~

The Doctor followed K9’s trail, which was much more clear now that he was heading in a less disturbed part of the hallways. Shapp had followed willingly, although it was more out of a desire to not be alone. He was terrible at sneaking, and the Doctor darted behind pillars and even did a barrel roll on a whim to see how the poor man would react. For the most part Shapp did the same, although it was slightly comical to see him flail about as he attempted to get off the ground. He spent the next three minutes getting the dust off of his uniform.

Eventually Shapp tapped him on the shoulder. “Are you sure this is Zeos?” he asked.

“Yes,” the Doctor replied, as he peered down the corridor. The lights had gone out up ahead, and he wondered if it was another trap.

“It’s very dusty,” Shapp continued, and the Doctor wondered when he was going to get to the point.

He looked at the corridor some more. K9 wouldn’t have gone down there if was dangerous, so maybe the lights had run out of power since no one had maintained them. “Maybe the Zeons don’t use it much,” he replied, opening up his Time senses. There didn’t seem to be any disturbances… or much of anything at all, really, which concerned him.

“It’s not irradiated,” Shapp said, and that got his attention.

“How do you know?” the Doctor asked.

Shapp held up his wrist, the rad-check bracelet attached. “I’ve checked. And the air’s clean, but nobody could have been here for years.”

He had a point, and the Doctor glanced at the cobwebs. “Except K9,” he pointed out, gesturing at the tracks. “Here.” He held up the dog whistle. Shapp made a disgruntled noise, but blew it willingly.

“Have you ever seen a Zeon, Shapp?” the Doctor asked, mildly, as he waited for K9. Though the corridor seemed harmless, he would rather not risk it. The Shadow seemed like the type of person to like, er, shadows.

“Not since the war started,” Shapp replied.

“No, before the war,” the Doctor corrected.

Shapp blinked. “Well, of course! We traded with them.”

The Doctor had figured as much, given the existence of the teleport. “What do they look like?”

Shapp looked baffled. “Er, much the same as us. Their clothes are different, but apart from that…” he shrugged.

Well, that wasn’t what he expected. “They’re not tall, emaciated creatures in long black robes?” the Doctor asked.

“Not the ones I saw,” was the confused response. “Why?”

The Doctor looked down the corridor again, wondering what was taking K9 so long. The tracks were still fresh; surely he couldn’t have gotten too far? “Well, the ones who brought me here were. Very sinister.” It was possible that the war had somehow changed them, but since Shapp remembered a time before the war and was mid-twenties or so, that wasn’t nearly enough time to undergo any sort of evolution to that level. Perhaps if they had some form of genetic tinkering done, but even that would take time for the generations to grow and breed.

Shapp seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “Could be some result of biological warfare,” he offered, hesitantly.

“Yes, but there was no sign of your attacks getting through, though, is there?” the Doctor reminded him.

He seemed disturbed. “They must be Zeons. I mean, who else could they be?”

“Isn’t it odd that you’ve never taken any prisoners?” the Doctor asked, wondering if there was something more going on.

Shapp didn’t seem concerned. “Oh, they use the disintegration capsules like we do.”

K9 chose that moment to arrive. “Master,” he announced, though he sounded worried.

“K9, what took you so long?” he scolded.

The metal dog managed to look pleased. “I have been communicating with the Zeon commandant. It was most interesting.”

Then again he deserved to be. “Brilliant!” the Doctor enthused. “We’d like to meet this commandant, wouldn’t we, Shapp?”

With the long-suffering look of one who was used to obeying orders and not asking questions, Shapp nodded. “Yes, could be useful.”

“It can be arranged,” K9 replied. As the Doctor stared at him expectantly, K9 asked, confused, “Now?”

The Doctor was about to say yes, then remembered that K9 had not found Rose, nor was Romana there. “Well, I mean, I think you’d better trace Romana and Merak first, since I assume they are trying to find Rose and Astra,” he finally said.

“Affirmative,” K9 replied. “Please follow.”

Shapp looked bemused. “He seems in good fettle.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed.

“Fettle?” K9 asked. “Define fettle.”

The Doctor was tickled that he knew something K9 didn’t, for once. “Well, you know. Form, condition, tone.”

K9 wasn’t amused. “It is stimulating to communicate for once with something other than a limited and unpredictable organic intelligence.”

Startled, the Doctor stopped him. “What did you just say? With something other?”

“Affirmative,” K9 replied, happily. “I have been communicating with my own kind.”

Not expecting that, the Doctor exchanged an uneasy look with Shapp. If K9 hadn’t been talking to the Zeons, then what, exactly, had he conversed with?

~*~

They found Romana and Merak combing the corridors with an air of looking for a needle in a haystack. He fought back the disappointment of not seeing a blonde head among them. “You look like lost something important,” he observed, and Romana nearly jumped a mile.

“Warn me next time!” she scolded, as Merak reluctantly joined them. He and Shapp looked at each other uncomfortably. The last time they had spoken, after all, hadn’t been on the best of terms.

Romana and the Doctor continued following K9, with the two Atrions bringing up the rear. They brought each other up to speed on all that had occurred, and then Romana showed him the bracelet. “And then Merak said he found this. It’s Astra’s. The strange thing is, it gives off a very faint signal on the tracer. It’s obviously not the sixth segment, so what is it?”

The Doctor examined it. “Well, I’d say it’s been in touch with the sixth segment, wouldn’t you?”

Romana sighed. “Yes, I know, but so was Astra’s circlet, but that didn’t give me any readings. And Merak only gave this to her a month or so ago; her headpiece has been with her much longer.”

Merak, tired of their speculations, stopped Shapp. “Shapp, has K9 mentioned Astra? Well, is that where she is, with this Zeon commandant?” Shapp hesitated. “Oh, for pity’s sake, man, tell me!” Merak begged, shaking him.

Shapp frowned and gently removed his hands. “If I were you, Merak, I’d try to exercise a little more self-control. Panicking isn’t going to save the Princess.” He hurried to catch up with the Time Lords, and Merak followed helplessly.

K9 led them to where he insisted the Commandant was located. “You will remain here, please, in silence,” he insisted. Then, much to the bafflement of the others, he rose in the air and began spinning in place.

“What’s wrong with K9?” Romana hissed, trying to keep her voice down.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor whispered back. “I’ve never seen him do that before. That doesn’t mean to say, of course, it isn’t normal.”

K9 stopped twirling. “Silence, please,” he reminded them. “Communicating.”

A series of squeaks, squeals, and beeps emitted. The Doctor watched in fascination, realizing that K9 was literally speaking in computer code. What looked like computer processors were embedded in the wall in front of the robotic dog, and they must have been what was replying. Eventually the sounds stopped, and the door slid open. “Wait here please,” K9 said, and entered the room.

Romana had been just as taken with the event. “I think that was a sort of identification ritual.” She said, excited. “You know, rather like the dance of the bees. A complicated set of movements to prevent strangers entering the er, whatever it is.”

“What are bees?” Merak asked.

Quite tired of the boy’s hysterics, the Doctor glared at him. “Insects! With stings in their tails,” he replied, then abruptly turned to look back at the doorway.

Romana laid a hand on Merak’s shoulder. “Pay him no mind,” she said. “He won’t be himself again until we get Rose back. Just like you won’t feel better until you get Astra back,” she said, meaningfully. Merak, realizing what Romana meant, relaxed and nodded at her.

K9 exited the room after a moment. “The commandant will see you now,” he said.

The Doctor instantly walked forward. “Come on Romana. You two, stay there,” he ordered, and practically stalked into the room. Romana gave them an apologetic look before hurrying after them.

They entered a circular room with a pedestal dominating the center, a large crystal set on top. Walls of computer banks surrounded it, and thin wires ran from the crystal to the various processors. Romana was instantly impressed. The size and shapes of the processors indicated the machine could think for itself, the various circuits allowing for the initial programming to change and learn based on its experience.

The Doctor sighed. “Shapp!” he called out, and the man nervously entered. “There’s your enemy, Shapp,” the Doctor said, gesturing at the computer. “Runs everything. Attack, defence, surveillance, production, everything. The ideal war general. No glory, no speeches, no medals and no blood.”

Shapp looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“It’s fully automated,” the Doctor replied. “There are no Zeons on Zeos.”

“No… Zeons on Zeos?” he repeated, bewildered.

The Doctor shook his head. “No. Just this passionless lump of minerals and circuitry. Highly efficient, doing very well, giving Atrios a battering, killed millions without a flicker. Just doing its job. And totally invincible.”

Romana eyed him warily. He was obviously winding Shapp up, though to what purpose she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was in an effort for Shapp to open his eyes and escape from the narrow world view he had once came from. Perhaps the confusing clues that were giving less support to their theory over the sixth segment was bothering him. Or maybe the absence of Rose was driving him spare. Since he was ignoring her, she suspected that he had something planned, but it would be nice to know ahead of time so she wouldn’t have to keep improvising.

Shapp, however, refused to be ruffled. “Invincible? We’ll see about that,” he said, and pulled out his gun. Instantly a camera shot at it, and the smoking mass of metal fell to the floor as Shapp cradled his injured palm. “I see,” he replied, calmly. Romana was impressed. “Automated defense mechanism.”

Merak had wandered into the room. “Doctor…!” he began, but the Doctor interrupted him.

“It’s alright, Merak,” he said. “Be quiet. K9, would you ask your friend here…”

“Mentalis,” K9 interrupted, sounding offended on the computer’s behalf.

The Doctor looked taken aback, but recovered soon enough. “K9, would you ask… Mentalis here if the name Astra rings a bell, so to speak?”

After a brief communication K9 replied. “Mentalis has instructions that all information regarding Princess Astra is of no consequence.”

“And the war?” the Doctor asked.

“The war is over. The bombardment is over. The next step is obliteration,” K9 replied helpfully.

“For whom?”

K9 hesitated. “Everything,” he finally admitted.


	7. Chapter 7

Rose swallowed when their captor turned its attention to her. “Oh? Do tell.”

She hesitated, but seeing Astra trying to hide her tears convinced Rose that she had to try. “My… companions,” she said, hesitantly. “They… have this tracer, that allows the holder to find the final segment. We’ve been using it to collect the other pieces, and it led us to Atrios.”

Their captor looked interested. “So you are saying this tracer will lead me to the final segment?”

Rose nodded. “If you let me go, I can go get it…”

“No,” their captor interrupted. “No, I think not.” He looked between her and Astra, thoughtful. “The more I wonder, the more I believe…” he abruptly stopped and smiled, though it was more of a leer. “I shall receive the tracer. But not by your hand.” He snapped his fingers and a guard sprung forward, placing a two small black devices in his hand. “Yes. This will do nicely.”

Dread coiled in Rose’s stomach. What had she done? The guards made sure to secure her to the wall, and though she struggled she couldn’t move much. Their captor approached her and placed one of the devices on her throat. “You will do as I say,” he commanded, and Rose cried out as she felt the device invade her mind. The link that connected her to the TARDIS rose up in fury, but it was a losing battle; the signal burrowed its way into her, and soon all she knew was to obey.

~*~

“We have a problem.” The Doctor finally said. “Well, several problems. Mentalis knows, but won’t tell, about Astra. Refuses us access to the memory banks but tells us that the Marshal’s on his way here to blow this place to smithereens.”

“But won’t it react?” Shapp asked.

“Oh yes,” Romana replied, having been examining the circuitry. “Mentalis is convinced it’s invincible. It’s been programmed not to accept defeat.”

Merak perked up. “Then it’ll stop him!”

“It’ll counterattack,” Shapp agreed.

“Unfortunately, it’s been programmed that the war is over, so it can’t attack.” the Doctor said. “It thinks it’s won. That’s the trouble with machines.”

Romana was concerned. “So what will happen?”

He sighed. “Well, it’ll self-destruct. I think obliteration is the term it used.”

Her eyes widened. “So if the Marshal attacks…”

“Which he will,” Shapp grumbled,

“There will be a rather large bang,” the Doctor agreed, “big enough to blow up Zeos, take Atrios with it, and make certain the whole thing ends in a sort of draw. That’s the way these military minds work. The Armageddon factor.”

Merak paled. “You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m afraid not,” the Doctor said.

Shapp was clearly rattled, and the Doctor was impressed that he managed to keep his emotions under control. “So the war has been futile from the start.”

The Doctor eyed him seriously. “Has it ever occurred to you, Shapp, that you and the Marshal and this thing are in an arena, playing out a game for some evil alien spectator?”

“The third force,” Romana realized, realizing who had been controlling the Marshal all along.

The Doctor nodded at her. “Yes. I think I’ve met him. Calls himself the Shadow.”

Merak was trying to compose himself. “Do you think the Shadow has Astra as well?”

“It’s a possibility,” Romana replied. “And he probably has Rose too.”

“So what are you going to do?” Shapp asked.

The Doctor, who had been pacing up until this point, spun to face them. “Well, we’re going to try and neutralise and dismantle Mentalis here, and it’s absolutely essential that while I’m fiddling it doesn’t have to be distracted by an attack from the Marshal.” He walked over to join them, his previous bad mood gone now that he once again had a plan. “Now listen, I want you two to go back to Atrios via the transmat. You, Shapp, are to contact the Marshal. Tell him he’s won. Tell him the war’s over. Tell him anything you like but stop him taking any further action.”

Shapp looked distressed. “And if I can’t?”

“Well then Mentalis…” The Doctor began, but Shapp interrupted him.

“If the Marshal refuses to listen?” He asked bitterly.

“Then Mentalis will…”

Shapp, years of bitterness and anger having been built up inside him, was not listening. “If he insists on going ahead?”

“Well, then Mentalis will go into it’s Armageddon sequence, and we’ll be bits of dust flying round the cosmos, including the Marshal!” the Doctor said, exasperated. “You might even tell him that. What are you waiting for?”

Shapp blinked, then raced for the door in embarrassment.

Merak grabbed Romana’s arm before she could help the Doctor. “What about Astra?”

Romana smiled reassuringly. “Merak, don’t worry about Astra. We’ll find her. Your duty lies with your patients. You must go back to Atrios with Shapp.”

Though he looked like he’d rather do anything but, he conceded and hurried after Shapp.

~*~

The Doctor and Romana set to work immediately, brainstorming ways to take Mentalis offline without risking the automated defenses. Romana had tried taking the cameras offline, but they had shielding around them which made it impossible. K9 came up with the current plan- breaking into the casing. Apparently the engineers did this frequently to do check-ups and insert new programs, so the defense system wouldn’t be alarmed.

“K9,” the Doctor said casually, “are you sure this is all right?” The cameras were twitching suspiciously.

“Affirmative,” the robot dog replied.

“I mean,” the Doctor explained, and he tried to find a latch, “it doesn’t feel threatened or anything?”

“Negative,” K9 confirmed. “Proceed.”

He returned to his work, and Romana eyed the cameras. “Doctor?” she finally asked.

“Yes?” he replied, absently.

“Do you think it was the Shadow who did this?” she continued, gesturing around the room.

He nodded as he managed to bend the casing a little. The cameras didn’t so much as twitch. “Oh, more than likely.”

Hesitantly, she continued. “Well, since there don’t seem to be any Zeons on Zeos, if you know what I mean, presumably it’s the Shadow who’s got the Princess…. and Rose.”

The Doctor’s eyes darkened as he remembered the torture chamber. If he had hurt Rose… “Probably, yes. The question, of course, is where?”

She placed her hand in front of her face. “What about between Atrios and Zeos? Do you remember?”

He stared at her with growing wonder before beaming. “Romana, that’s brilliant. Of course! He’s got a third planet all to himself!”

“All we have to do is find it,” Romana said.

He looked back at Mentalis. “After I’ve stopped this.”

She raised her eyebrows. “If you can stop it.”

“Ye of little faith,” he scoffed, then pulled out his sonic screwdriver. After a few adjustments, he aimed it at the casing. Three small holes were blown into the casing, and he smirked at her. Romana slid back, not wanting to risk it.

She was right to. As soon as the Doctor pulled off the casing, Mentalis’s crystal turned a lurid red and an alarm sounded. “What have you done?” Romana exclaimed, sliding back further until she hit the wall. The Doctor joined her shortly after.

“I don’t know!” he replied. “K9?”

“You have triggered the primary alert function,” K9 said.

“Blast.”

“Affirmative.”

“And now it’s waiting to blow itself up,” Romana realized.

“If required, to assist attack,” K9 added.

The Doctor flinched. “Let’s hope Shapp reaches the Marshal before he does anything silly. We’re very vulnerable till that’s done.”

“Yes, like sitting inside a time bomb,” Romana agreed.

K9 began conversing the Mentalis, and then rushed over. “Assimilating information!” K9 grumbled.

“Well?” the Doctor demanded when K9 was through.

“Hostile craft approaching!” K9 exclaimed.

The Doctor looked worried. “The Marshal. Shapp must have missed him.” He began pacing, eyeing Mentalis worriedly.

K9 was still communicating. “Entering self-destruct sequence. In self-destruct sequence.”

The two Time Lords clung to each other. “It’s going to blow itself up,” Romana said, as a beep emitted at regular intervals, obviously counting down.

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “And us with it. Unless…” He took a deep breath and dived towards the exposed panel. Romana jumped when all the cameras aimed toward him. “Look out!” she yelled as they fired.

The Doctor had rolled away at the last second, avoiding the worse of the explosion. He batted at the bits of his scarf that had caught fire. “That was a bit too close,” he said, calmly.

Romana helped beat out the small flames on his coat. “How did they miss?” she asked, though she was relieved that he was still alive. Rose would have killed her, for starters, had any serious damage been done to him. If the TARDIS didn’t get to her first.

“They weren’t aiming at me, they were aiming at that, the control centre, like a scorpion stinging itself to death,” he replied, straightening his clothes out. “As soon as it sensed I was trying to interfere with the sequence, it destroyed its own control centre. It’s mindless now, clicking toward oblivion. How long, K9?”

“Damage renders data unavailable,” K9 reported.

Oh, not good. “The TARDIS!” he shouted. If they arrived fast enough, they could stop the Marshal and prevent the destruction of Zeon and Atrios alike.

Romana tracked the Marshal’s ship as the Doctor grabbed the various pieces of the Key. He returned shortly after. “Here, take a look at this,” he said, placing it on a small table the TARDIS had provided.

“Ah, you put the five pieces together. Good,” Romana said, examining it. It looked a little like a tesseract, with one side still missing.

“Have you got the tracer?” he asked, and when Romana produced it he steadied the Key. “Lock it in. Lock it.”

She did so, and he stepped away to study it. Romana frowned as nothing happened. “Now what?”

“Well, it was just an idea,” he replied, clearly disappointed. “I thought if we had five-sixths of the pieces it might give us some power. Obviously Guardian technology doesn’t work that way.”

Romana sighed in frustration. “If only we had a sixth piece.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, then grabbed her arm in excitement. “Or a sixth piece!”

She stared at him, wondering if he had finally gone mad. “What do you mean?”

He pointed at the Key, practically bouncing. “What do you see there?”

“A gap,” she replied.

“Exactly!” He crowed. “A gap! The shape of the sixth piece!” He picked up the Key. “Now that we know what it looks like, we can make one!”

He raced off to his lab, returning seconds later with a series of instruments that recorded the necessary depth, width, height, and mass of the final piece. He ran off again, babbling something about a closet and spare wires, before she heard the lab door slam.

“I hope he isn’t going to make a mess again,” Romana sighed. “Last time it took me ages just to find a pair of wire cutters.”

The TARDIS beeped at her in pity.

Twenty minutes but what seemed like a lifetime later, the Doctor finally rushed out after some distant angry cursing. “Here we are,” he said, breathlessly. In his hand he held a brown object, presumably his ‘missing’ segment.

“What’d you make that out of?” Romana asked, thinking he could have at least replicated the color.

“Chronodyne,” he replied, tersely.

“Is it compatible?” she asked, concerned. Chronodyne by itself was already highly unstable, and adding it to the Key would produce an unknown reaction.

“Well, it’s as compatible as anything we’ve got,” he grumbled, and Romana sighed. Looked like his good mood had evaporated again- if this bipolar attitude was what she got without Rose, Romana wasn’t sure how much longer she would last.

K9 scanned the Chronodyne. “Compatibility ratio seventy four percent. Component therefore unstable and liable to deteriorate.”

“Yes, and so are we if this doesn’t work,” the Doctor reminded him. “This should in theory give us powers of balance and stasis. We should be able to create a neutral, timeless zone, for a while. Now, how does it go?”

Romana snatched it from him when it looked like he was going to force it on there. “Careful!” she admonished, then studied it. “Let me just…” She lifted the tracer, then smoothly slid the manufactured segment into its slot. “There.”

“Lock it!” the Doctor exclaimed, and she did so. The tracer lit up, but shortly died down. The Key stubbornly stayed the same. She slumped to the table. “We failed.”

Not willing to give up yet, the Doctor cracked his knuckles. “Have we?”

He raced to the TARDIS to take readings, the view screen still up from before. Romana watched as he practically danced around the console, complaining a few times when the TARDIS didn’t give him what he was looking for.

Since he had snapped at her the last time she tried to help, Romana anxiously watched the view screen. Any moment now the Marshal would destroy Zeos, and Mentalis would self-destruct, taking everyone with it.

So she was a bit surprised when, as soon as the Marshal’s ship came into view, it abruptly disappeared.

Romana pitched forward in shock, unable to believe what she was seeing. Because the Marshal’s ship had appeared again, only to vanish at the same exact spot.

And the she realized what the tickling at the back of her mind was telling her- they were in a Time Loop! “We did it!” she exclaimed, and the Doctor looked at the viewscreen.

“Well, ninety nine percent,” he said, walking forward to study the loop.

“Correction,” K9 said, primly. “Ninety nine point six.”

“Even better!” He replied. “We haven’t stopped them dead. We got them in a three second time loop…” he froze, and his voice was soft. “Oh!”

Romana looked at him curiously. “What?”

He looked at her. “Don’t you feel it?” He shuddered. “I’ve stopped the universe. That is a feeling I hope to never experience again. Still, they’ll never notice.” He paused, then smirked. “Just imagine, somewhere someone’s just slipped on a banana skin and he’ll be wondering forever when he’s going to hit the ground.”

Once he had mentioned it, Romana noticed the uneasy prickling in the back of her skull. Her Time Senses were insisting something was wrong, since the entire universe was, in a sense, caught in a massive time loop. But it was a periphery sense, since her personal Timeline was insisting that nothing was wrong. “Doctor, why isn’t it affecting us?” she asked.

“Oh, come on, Romana!” he exclaimed, and she knew he was thinking disparaging thoughts about her Academy training. “I mean, if it affected the operators, no one would be able to use it. Even the Guardians would think of that!”

The senses at the the back of her mind prodded at her and she paused. “So at the moment… we’ve got absolute power over everything, everywhere.”

He stared into the distance. “Yes. Yes, it’s quite a feeling, isn’t it? Gods for an hour or two.” He preened, adjusting his scarf primly. Romana rolled her eyes.

K9, sensing her annoyance, spoke up. “Negative. Deterioration rate of chronodyne chip is in direct proportion to area affected.”

“Well of course it is!” The Doctor chastised him. “Just imagine the amount of power required to stop the entire universe.”

Romana looked down at the robotic dog. “How long have we got, K9?”

“Insufficient information for accurate prediction.”

The Doctor frowned. “Probability then.”

K9 considered. “Probability is for maximum three point two five minutes.

“Three and a quarter minutes?” the Doctor asked, clearly disappointed.

“Maximum,” K9 confirmed. “Now three point one three minutes.”

Distressed, the Doctor muttered to himself. Romana pursed her lips. “Hang on. If we’ve got so much power, we ought to be able to localise it in some way. That should help.”

“Yes…” the Doctor muttered. “But how do you set about localising a time loop? The Academy always said it was never to be tried because the strain…”

Romana smirked. “The Doctor, the great rebel, is listening to his elders for once?” At his glower she gestured at the Key. “If one has god-like power, one ought to be able to use them, oughtn’t they?” At his look she grinned. “Command it!”

He stared at her, the straightened. “Oh, yes. Yeah. Stand aside. I…” he hesitated, shooting her a nervous look. “Hey, I’d better get this right.”

“Affirmative,” K9 replied, nervously. Romana patted his head sympathetically.

He placed his hands on either side of the Key. “I command that the spatio-temporal loop be confined to the vicinity of the Marshal’s vessel, the coordinates of which are already known. There.” He adjusted his scarf nervously.

“And the Zeon computer control room!” Romana reminded him.

He nodded. “And the Zeon computer room!” he told the Key. “Let it be done.” Quickly, he backed up to rest against the console, the TARDIS thrumming in this head. “I thought I handled that rather well,” he mused.

Romana eyed him. “All power corrupts, Doctor.”

He scoffed. “Oh, come on. It’s only a three-second Time Loop.”

“Negative,” K9 replied. “Time Loop stretching."

They looked at him in concern. “Already? How much?” the Doctor asked.

“Point three milliseconds per second,” K9 said. Romana shifted as she realized the implications of that.

The Doctor stared at the Key. “And the chronodyne chip?"

K9 scanned the Key. “Now deteriorating.”

“Yes,” the Doctor grumbled. “I thought you’d say that.”

Romana placed her hand on his arm. “I think we should move.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yes,” he said, wistfully. “Nothing lasts forever.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor pries Astra for information, and Merak is betrayed.

Rose stood by Astra silently, awaiting her orders. In the back of her mind, where her consciousness still resided, she screamed and fought for control, but nothing she did made a difference. The Shadow had complete control over everything she did. She felt violated, since he had flicked through her memories and experiences with little concern.

The Shadow returned to the room, his demented grin searing itself into her mind. “The Doctor has been forced to use the Key to Time. It is no longer in a place of safety. You two will lure the Doctor here and help me gain access to the Tardis. You understand?” he ordered.

Rose had no choice but to obey. “We understand,” she and Astra said in concert. The Princess’s face and eyes were totally blank.

“Go,” he growled, and Rose found herself marching towards the door automatically.

“You take the left, I’ll take the right,” Astra said once they had been transported to Zeos, and Rose nodded. The Shadow whispered that the tracer was Astra’s responsibility; Rose was to gain access to the Key itself. Though she screamed and tried to force herself out of her cage, her body and mind could do nothing else but respond to his directive.

~*~

The Doctor and Romana hurried through the hallways towards the computer room, their Time senses letting them know the decay rate. They didn’t have much time to start with, but with Time unraveling at the current rate, they had even less. K9 was ordered to guard the TARDIS, and the Key, and though Romana had her reservations she didn’t have time to argue with the Doctor about them.

When they entered the computer room they found the tangled mess of wires that had once been Mentalis. “Not very hopeful, is it?” she said as she examined the circuitry. “Whoever designed this had a very twisted mind.”

“Twisted or no, we need to think like them in order to stop the countdown before Time deteriorates further,” the Doctor replied. Romana smiled grimly and got to work.

~*~

Merak awoke in a small room, his head throbbing. His hand fumbled in his pocket until he found a small pill, and with a sigh he swallowed it. Instantly the headache dissipated, and he looked around the small space in confusion. How had he gotten there? He remembered following Shapp in order to get back to Atrios, and then he thought he had heard Astra…

“Astra!” he shouted, as he struggled up from the floor. He had seen her! But there was something wrong with her. She had… he cried out in pain as his leg protested the action.

“Merak!” Astra’s beloved, beautiful face appeared above him. “Merak, I’m here! Are you hurt?”

He winced as he carefully rearranged himself. “My leg, it’s twisted. What happened?”

Astra looked distressed. “You fell. I tried to save you, but…

“I thought you were…” He swallowed. No. She was alive, and here, and everything was okay again.

Worriedly, she asked, “Can you stand?”

“I… I think so.” He carefully stood up, making sure to not put any pressure on his damaged leg.

Astra smiled, sweetly. “Here, let me help you.” Her hand reached down to him. He didn’t hesitate to grab it.

She hauled him up to her, and he gripped her tightly. “Astra, you’re here, you’re alive,” he mumbled into her shoulder. It had been so long since he had seen her; he felt like he had finally woken up again.

Astra pulled back from the embrace. “Come, Merak. You’re injured, and we’re not safe here. We must find the Doctor; he can help us.”

Merak nodded. “Whatever you say. Do you know where he is?”

“Yes,” Astra said. “I saw his ship earlier, but I was so worried about you that I had to find you.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and he leaned against her. “Come. I’ll support you.”

Their going was slow, but eventually they turned down a hallway Astra seemed to recognize, because she picked up her pace. Ahead was a small blue shed that looked starkly out-of-place in the bleak interior.

“Halt!” K9 appeared around the corner. “Who goes there!”

“K9, it’s me, Merak,” he replied, wincing as his leg reminded him what had happened.

K9’s ears twitched. “Affirmative. You may enter.” He made his way forward, but K9 suddenly extended a sensor. “Stop! Identify second unit.”

Astra shrunk back a little. “What is it?”

“It’s called K9,” Merak explained. “It belongs to the Doctor.” He almost collapsed as he accidentally put weight on his leg, and Astra caught him worriedly.

K9 inturrupted. “Affirmative. Repeat: identify second unit.”

Merak bit his lip, the pain making him dizzy. “K9, this is Astra! Princess Astra. The Doctor thinks that she may be able to help him.”

K9, however, didn’t seem interested in her. “Hostile presence detected.”

“Where?” Merak asked, worried. He and Astra were unarmed, and if the Zeons caught them now…

K9 rolled aside. “Hostiles approaching. Take cover!”

They hurried to the TARDIS as K9 fought off two figures that appeared behind them. Astra stared at the blue shed in confusion. “What is this?”

“It belongs to the Doctor,” Merak replied, as he leaned against the TARDIS in pain. The wood vibrated curiously underneath him, but he barely noticed.

Astra, however, seemed fascinated by it. “What’s inside?” She tried the handle. “I must get inside.”

He stared at her in confusion. Her sudden, complete interest in the ship worried him. “It’s no use, Astra. Only the Doctor and Romana can get in. What’s the matter?” he asked, concerned, and took her hand.

Astra suddenly relaxed and smiled at him. “It’s the air in here.”

Instantly worried, Merak tried to stand. “We should get back to Atrios. The teleport’s…”

She stopped him. “No, we must go on. We must find your friends.” Astra led him off in a different direction. He willingly followed, but that didn’t stop his concern. She was hiding something from him, and that was not the Astra he knew.

~*~

They had eventually found the source of the countdown, but by that time the Time Loop had deteriorated significantly. “We need to find the final segment to stabilize this,” Romana said. “The reset is taking longer, and soon the Marshal will be able to fire.”

“Agreed,” the Doctor said, ripping out a few more wires. “Hurry, back to the TARDIS.”

They rushed out, only to be met by Merak and Romana. The boy was practically glowing. “Doctor, I found her! This is Astra. She was captured by the Zeons.”

The Doctor looked concerned. “Was she, now. How do you do?” He shook her hand. “I’m the Doctor, and this is Romana.”

“Hello,” Astra said, politely. “Merak’s told me all about you.”

“Tell me,” the Doctor replied. “You don’t know anyone by the name of Rose, do you?”

Astra looked taken aback. “Rose?”

“Yes, yes,” the Doctor replied, impatiently. “About this tall, blonde hair in plaits, wearing jeans and pink jacket. She went missing the same time as you did.”

“Oh!” Astra said. “Yes, I remember her. We escaped at the same time, but I’m afraid I lost her.”

The Doctor wilted. “How did you manage that?” Romana asked, worried about the Doctor.

“Through a tunnel of light,” she replied, confidently.

Merak butted in. “I was on my way to the transmat when I heard her calling.” He looked at his leg sheepishly. “Then I fell and hurt myself.”

Astra gripped his hand. “I think one of the guards that were after me shot him.”

The Doctor had recovered. “Very likely, very likely.” He peered over Astra’s shoulder. “Where are they now?”

“Well,” Merak replied, “they were coming after us, but K9 chased them away.”

“Good!” The Doctor replied, looking at Romana.

Romana nodded at him. “I think Merak needs medical attention.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “ Look, Astra, why don’t you and Merak go back to Atrios via the transmat? He’ll show you the way.”

Astra immediately protested. “I’d feel safer with you,” she whispered, staring at him intently. She had dropped Merak’s hand and her expression had grown… soft. He didn’t miss the way she swayed towards him, either.

He stepped back, alarmed. “Well, I dare say, but we’ve got a few complicated things to do and Merak does need attention,” he stammered. “I think the thing you should do is go back and show your people that you’re free.”

Merak pulled her back towards him. “He’s right Astra.”

The Doctor kept his distance. “Of course I’m right. Off you go now. Hope to see you soon!” Merak dragged a reluctant Astra away and the Doctor’s forced smile faded. “Odd.”

“Very odd,” Romana agreed. “And from all that Merak has said, very out of character.”

The Doctor took a breath. “I think we need to concentrate on the Shadow and the third planet. Not only is Rose probably still there, but that is the center of all that is happening.”

Though Romana was still worried about him, she agreed. Work was a better distraction than worry.

~*~

Merak had the transmat in his sights when Astra’s grip on him fell. He cried out in pain as he landed directly on the wound. “Astra, you’ll have to help me up,” he panted, struggling to get in a better position.

“I have more important work to do,” she replied, voice hard.

He looked up at her, and her expression was not kind. “What do you mean?”

She rolled her eyes. “I’d stay and watch you die, but I haven’t got the time!”

Horror rolled over him. “You’re not Astra!”

“You fool,” she scoffed, and swept away. He flinched as the two figures K9 had fought back appeared on the transmat. Merak cowered against the nearest wall, but the figures paid him no mind as they followed after the thing that called herself Astra. With no choice, he dragged himself to the transmat. The only thing he could do was get himself fixed, so that he could, maybe, return and help.

 _Oh, no,_ he realized just before the transmat took him, _I led her towards the Doctor’s ship! She knows where they are because of me!_

Moments later, he was back on Atrios.

~*~

Romana had to sprint to keep up with the Doctor, and by the time they reached the TARDIS she had to engage her respiratory bypass. How had Rose managed to keep up with him? It was taking every ounce of her superior biology to stay less than three feet away, and Rose easily stayed by his side.

“K9? K9?” the Doctor called, but the robotic dog didn’t respond. “Something must have happened,” he muttered, and quickly made his way to the TARDIS.

Before he could enter however, they heard Astra’s panicked voice. “Doctor!” she yelled, and didn’t seem to notice them off to the side as she ran straight to the TARDIS. “Help! They’re after me!” She banged on the doors, and the TARDIS rumbled in protest in the Doctor’s mind.

He went over to her and dragged her away. She jumped and screamed when he touched her, but relaxed almost immediately. “What is it? Quick, Romana,” he said. “Get the key.”

Romana hurriedly turned her key in the lock and they all piled in. Astra froze when she entered, eyes wide. The TARDIS hummed a warning at him, but he ignored Her. “Where’s Merak?” The Doctor asked as Romana checked the status of the Key. “Is he alright?”

“I got him into the transmat shaft but they were on me before I could follow. He’s safe, though,” Astra said, faintly. Her eyes immediately locked onto the Key.

The Doctor didn’t seem to notice and joined Romana at the console. “What’s the status?”

“It’s stretched to about five seconds,” Romana replied. On the viewscreen the Marshal’s ship loomed ominously close before once again vanishing.

He swiftly did the calculations. “Gives us about an hour real time, then.” It wasn’t enough.

“If it goes on stretching and if the false piece lasts long enough.” Romana replied. “Listen, I’ll get a fix on the third planet.”

He nodded at her and looked over at Astra. She was still staring at the Key, a wild look in her eyes. “Pretty thing, isn’t it?” he said, mildly.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s the Key to Time,” the Doctor replied. Sweat had broken out on her brow. “Astra, are you alright?”

She swallowed. “Yes, perfectly.” She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away, however.

“Well, now you’ve seen it, does it trigger off any hidden memories?” He asked, carefully.

She twitched, but turned to look at him. “No. It means nothing to me.”

“That’s a pity.” He sighed. “I was hoping you’d be able to tell us where the sixth piece is.”

Astra looked confused. “The sixth piece? But…” she turned and gestured at the Key.

“Yes. Look.” He pointed at the fake segment. “We have the other five segments. Now we’re looking for the sixth and final one. Think, Astra, think!”

As she swayed toward the Key, mesmerised, he checked under her collar. True to his suspicions, there was small black controller attached. Immediately he grabbed her hand, which had been reaching for the tracer. “I wouldn’t touch that. It’s hot.”

The TARDIS beeped. “Got it!” Romana informed him.

“Good!” he exclaimed, and dropped her hand. “Set the coordinates. Let’s get on our way.”

~*~

Rose stood by the Shadow as she watched the TARDIS materialize on the viewscreen. Through the link that connected them she knew that Astra had found the Key and the Doctor, and that the final piece was still missing- for some reason, he thought that Astra was also the key to finding it.

She curled in on herself in the back of her mind. The Doctor’s voice had triggered something in her, something else along with the riot of emotions. She guarded it desperately from the Shadow, a small glowing piece of hope that she clutched tightly to herself. He would not get this from her.

The Shadow, thankfully, was so assured of his victory that he barely paid her attention. “Your friends have arrived. We must greet them,” he said.

“Yes, Master,” she replied automatically. Unknown to him, Rose’s hands curled, as if holding something.

“You fool, Doctor,” the Shadow crowed. “The Key to Time is mine!”

His laugh ricocheted off the cave walls, and Rose smiled.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romana gets captured, and the Doctor reunites with an old acquaintance

The Shadow stepped up behind Rose. “You shall be my eyes and ears. The Doctor trusts you; he will tell you everything.” His hands combed through her hair to hide the control device, the plaits having been removed shortly after she was imprisoned. Inside herself Rose shuddered. “Go, now.”

“Yes, Master,” she intoned, and made her way to the door.

~*~

The TARDIS landed with a thump, and the Doctor felt Her revulsion at landing in a puddle of murky water. The Doctor reminded her of the time She landed him in the rubbish tip around the block from UNIT. She responded with the time he had accidentally piloted Her to the swamplands of Erebos, and how it had taken weeks to clean off Her shell.

He conceded the victory to Her for now and looked at Romana. “Well, we’re here. We tracked him to his lair.”

Romana looked grim. “Yes, we’ve got him exactly where he wants us…”

“All we have to do is find the sixth piece and stop the Shadow taking those other five,” he continued. “And find Rose along the way.”

Romana started pacing. “How can we get the sixth piece without using the tracer? Or had you forgotten the tracer’s holding the Key together, and if we take the tracer out, we break the time loop, and without the time loop millions of people on Zeos and Atrios will die, to say nothing of ourselves. And the time loop’s stretching already.” She gestured angrily at the monitor- the Marshal’s ship was taking up nearly the entire screen. “It’s up to six seconds now. That’s four seconds left. And how long will that thing last?”

The Doctor leapt up and raced over to the Key. “Diagonal thinking, that’s what’s required, isn’t it, Astra?”

The princess had been leaning against the wall near to the Key. “I’m sorry?” she asked. “I was lost.”

“Astra,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders, “We need you to help us find the Shadow.”

She straightened. “I shall stay here,” Astra said firmly.

“No, no, Astra, no,” he pleaded. “You’re the only one who’s ever been to the third planet before. Come on.”

She refused to budge. “I want to stay here.”

Romana joined them. “Astra, you said you wanted to help us. Don’t you want to save Atrios?”

Astra looked at her, and Romana was unnerved at how blank her eyes were. “My destiny no longer lies on Atrios.”

The Time Lords exchanged uneasy glances. “What do you mean?” Romana asked.

Astra looked at her blankly. “I understand.”

Romana took a step forward. “What did you say? Are you all right?”

The Doctor had been staring at Astra with wide eyes, but at Romana’s words he spun and stopped her. “Yes, yes, everything’s perfectly all right. Everything’s wonderful, isn’t it, Astra?”

“What?” Astra seemed to break out of her trance. “Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking about Merak.” She took a deep breath and moved towards the doors. “Yes, of course we must do everything we can to destroy the Shadow.”

Romana was suspicious, but after a nod from the Doctor she played along. “Do you know where he is?”

“I think so,” Astra replied, and left the TARDIS.

“What is going on?” Romana hissed as she passed the Doctor.

He shook his head. “Go on. I’ll catch you up.”

Though Romana looked like she was going to berate him, she followed after Astra. A distress signal immediately started sounding from the console. “Intergalactic distress signal?” he mused. “How very odd. How strange. Here?” He pushed a few more buttons, and stiffened when the records of the sender came back. “Rose,” he breathed, and raced out the doors.

~*~

Meanwhile, Rose hid in a small alcove as Astra led Romana away. “What shall I do?” she asked, quietly.

In her mind, the Shadow whispered. “Leave her to Astra. Follow the Doctor.”

Rose nodded. In the back of her mind, the real Rose continued working.

~*~

The Doctor pulled out his sensor from his pocket. “Two zero six,” he muttered, moving the dial. “Ah! There we go,” he said, when it beeped.

It led him through the caverns, beeping less when he turned the wrong way and beeping more when he walked toward the source of the distress call. It wasn’t the best device in the world, but it was the closest thing on hand.

He rounded a corner to see Romana and Astra staring at him. “Ah!” he said, then whirled when he heard someone behind him. “Shush. I think someone’s trying to play tricks on us. You girls better stick with me, or we’ll all get lost. I…” he blinked as he turned back around. They were no longer there. The Doctor looked around nervously, the tracking sensor beeping pitifully before it died. Oh, dear.

He ran. If the perception filters or psychic mirrors were strong enough to get past his shields, he didn’t want to stick around for too long.

“Doctor!” Romana’s voice came from behind him, and he whirled. There she was, peering around a column. But, no- she was glaring at him from the tunnel he just exited. And there, to his right- Romana with arms crossed, tapping her foot in annoyance. Three more appeared in various stages of anger, and just as suddenly as they appeared, all of them vanished.

This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.

~*~

“Doctor!” Romana shouted, as she saw him fleeing down the corridor up ahead. “Oh, what does he think he’s doing, going that way? I shouted at him. He must have seen us!” she huffed.

Astra considered for a moment. “I think I remember now. Yes, all these passages link up further on. Come on, Romana, we shall meet him.” She hurried on ahead and Romana had no choice to follow.

~*~

The Doctor screeched to a halt when he saw an image of himself wave as he passed by. Since he didn’t feel the Time lines strain the way they typically did when he met himself, he realized what was going on. It didn’t take long at all to discover the hidden camera, and he approached it. “Ah, I see what you’re at, splitting us up. Divide and conquer, is that it? And keeping Rose from me. You didn’t really imagine we were taken in by Astra, did you?” His smile was a fearsome thing. “No. Astra’s in your power, your employ. Little something on the neck, is it? Very crude, technically. Like all this amusement arcade rubbish. No, Shadow, or whatever you’re called. I’m sorry to tell you that Romana can look after herself.” His eyes blazed with a dark fire and Time seemed to gather around him. “We are Time Lords. Not like those innocents back on Atrios, you know. Time Lords sent by the Guardian to recover the Key to Time.”

“I know who you are, Doctor. I have always known,” the Shadow growled, and he sounded much, much more closer than the Doctor liked. He whirled to see the Shadow’s face on the opposite wall, filling up the giant view screen. “I have been waiting for you. I too serve a Guardian. A Guardian equal and opposite in power to the one who sent you. The Black Guardian, he who walks in darkness, and you are in the valley of the Shadow,” he sneered.

The Doctor tried to flee, but he felt the ground already being pulled out from under him. “No!” he shouted, scrambling for purchase, but he was already falling.

Behind him, Rose stepped out of the shadows. “The Doctor has been captured.”

~*~  
Romana followed Astra uneasily, shadows shifting and changing in her periphery. Every time she turned her head, however, they disappeared.

The lurid red lights blinked at them as they went. Romana suspected they were some sort of surveillance system, since they served no purpose for actual lighting. It would also explain Astra’s rapid pace, and seemingly random path. Even if Astra had escaped, it would be easy to forget which way you had taken in the maze.

She also knew that the Doctor was hiding something from her, specifically about Astra. The young girl had been acting oddly ever since they found her, and her obsession with the Key was suspicious. However, if what they thought of Astra was correct, it would certainly explain why she had been so focussed on it.

“Astra,” Romana said, as the girl suddenly rounded the corner. “Astra, what-”

“Come, Romana!” Astra said, and Romana found her near an opening. “We’ll be safe here.”

Still, Romana hesitated. There was something… wrong, with the room. Time acted oddly in that place, as if it wished to be anywhere else but there.

Astra, however, looked unconcerned, and against her better judgement Romana entered the room. Astra smirked at her, and suddenly the door- which had been disguised until then- slid shut. Romana stepped towards it, but before she could go very far a shadow peeled itself off the wall and brandished a laser gun at her.

Well, so much for trusting the Doctor. If she got out of this alive, Romana was going to stand her ground next time.

~*~

The Doctor came to with a start, an annoying ringing in his ears. He rubbed at them to get them to stop, only to realize the ringing was an external noise, not an internal one. The distress call that he had thought belonged to Rose was lying right next to him, and a quick look around the room confirmed that Rose wasn’t anywhere to be found. Rage nearly blinded him as he realized it was yet another trap, and he threw the distress signal against a wall, where it shattered.

He remained where he was for a moment, breathing heavily, fists clenched tight. His fear for her had multiplied since the Shadow had mentioned the Black Guardian; Rose had dreamed about him over the course of their search, and had woken up screaming. Though she never told him what had happened, it was clear that the events had terrified her. He and the TARDIS had worked on strengthening her mental shields, but they weren’t nearly as extensive or as strong as his. And if he could be affected in this place, how was Rose faring?

The fact that he couldn’t sense her was what worried him. The TARDIS had always linked them in some capacity, mostly so he could pinpoint her location and pick up on if she was hurt, but for a while now her mind had been sealed off.

He had nearly cried out when it happened, so used to her presence that to be left without it he felt like he was drowning. The link had existed for so long and he hadn’t realized how dependent he had become on it; even though he had shared a similar link with all his companions, it was Rose’s that had become vital to his very essence.

The Doctor knew why, of course. It was the same reason why she, alone out of all his companions, had stayed with him for this long. Time adored her, and even though he couldn’t read her Timelines he could see how they seemed to cherish her very existence. It would have made any Time Lord intrigued, but it was her soul that sang to him. From the moment he had taken her hand and they saved each other’s lives, something within him had resonated with her very being. Everything they did was in tune- singing, talking, saving the world. She knew what he would do sometimes before he even did it, and was exceptionally good at understanding what he was feeling and challenging him when she thought he was wrong. Likewise, he knew when she needed silence over a distraction, just what her limits were in her fragile human body, and how no matter how upset she was at him she would always forgive him. That last part was the most important, because he could have lost her so easily at many different times in his life. And he didn’t know how he would have coped, especially because he…

A scraping sound caught his attention, and he looked towards the source of it warily. He highly doubted that it was one of the Shadow’s minions, because they seemed to be able to pop out of any shadow that existed. Still, he didn’t know just who was working for the Shadow, so perhaps he could be introduced to some renegade Zeon.

The Doctor crept quietly over the sound, and when a small section of the wall started to turn he flattened himself behind it. The space was barely large enough for an adult to crawl through, so it would give him the advantage should he have to subdue the newcomer.

The person on the other end shuffled out awkwardly, catching sight of the Doctor almost immediately. He looked like an average guy- buzz-cut brown hair, brown eyes, dressed in a standard jumpsuit for the current period- but the Doctor felt the tingle in the back of his skull that meant he was staring at another Time Lord.

The man stared at him in astonishment before grinning. “Hello, Thete!” the man crowed. The Doctor flinched at that name; not only did he hate it, but the only people who knew it were those in his classes at the Academy, and he’d rather not remember those days. “How you been, boy?”

The Doctor forced a smile. “Er, hello.”

The Time Lord scrunched his brow. “It is Thete, innit? Theta Sigma? Yeah, ‘course it is. Remember me, ay?”

The Doctor merely stared, wondering if this was yet another hallucination.

~*~

Romana was shepherded into a small room set into the cavern wall, the metal bars arranged suspiciously around her and psychic receivers embedded into the wall. She wasn’t entirely sure what was going on, but it didn’t look good.

A figure swept into the room, and from the way Astra reacted around him she assumed he was the shadow. “The Doctor has been contained,” it informed Astra. “You have done well in capturing Romana as well.”

Astra inclined her head. “Thank you, Master.”

The Shadow sat down on a stalagmite that dominated the center of the room, and from the way he reclined in it he apparently considered it a type of throne. “Now, Romana,” the Shadow said, “you will tell us what we need to know.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m telling you nothing.”

“I thought you may say that.” He looked at Astra. “Begin.”

Astra pushed a button on a small device in her hand, and electricity coursed through Romana’s body. Yes, she thought, this was definitely not good.

~*~

The Doctor stood and eyed the Time Lord suspiciously. “I don’t remember you.”

He didn’t look the slightest bit upset. “It’s me, Drax!”

“Drax?” the Doctor asked, blankly. He knew a lot of the people in his class, but Drax didn’t ring a bell.

“Come on, Thete!” Drax laughed. “Class of ninety two?”

He blinked. “Not…?” An image of a cow-licked blonde boy popped into his mind. They had only one class together, which had been…

“We was on the tech course together!” Drax replied cheerfully. “Long time ago now, Thete, eh? Must be what, four hundred and fifty years? And a long way from Gallifrey.”

Suddenly, the Doctor realized who he was. “Of course! Drax!” he crowed, and executed the secret handshake they had created back in the day.

Drax beamed. “Yeah, I was all right at practical, remember?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, not wanting to get into the Academy days. It seemed Drax had kept his chatty tendencies, though he seemed worse now that it had been a few centuries since they had last seen each other.

“Temporal theory did me,” Drax continued. “Still, you did well, mind, getting your doctorate and all that.”

The Doctor changed the subject. “What happened to you?”

“I failed, didn’t I?” he said, subdued. Then he shook himself. “Still, not to worry. I was doing all right till this lot. I went into repair and maintenance. Do anything, anytime, anywhere. I’ve been all over the galaxy. Buy a bit, do it up, sell it…” Drax shrugged.

Something about what Drax had said niggled at the Doctor’s mind. “What sort of things?”

Drax looked confused, but answered willingly enough. “Cybernetics, guidance systems, you name it.”

“Armament?” the Doctor asked, concerned.

“Yeah, and that,” Drax said, uncomfortably. Hastily, he added, “But not on a regular basis, of course!”

“Drax, I was introduced to a computer on Zeos,” the Doctor said, watching him carefully. “Called itself Mentalis. Did you by any chance have anything to do with the installation?”

Drax flinched. “Strictly under duress,” he said, miming a choke hold. “That’s why I’m here. The minute I finished the job, wham. Feet never touched the ground.”

“The Shadow?”

Drax sighed. “I didn’t know who he was, did I. Just another customer, I thought. And then he puts the heavy word on. Do it or die. I mean, what would you have done?” he asked, distressed.

“Yes, very tricky,” the Doctor muttered. Drax’s confession made a lot of things clear. The wiring and programming couldn’t have been possible with human minds, though not sophisticated enough to pass Academy standards. Drax, who was brilliant with technology but terrible at everything else, would have been able to build Mentalis without a doubt.

Drax, meanwhile, had spotted the smashed distress beacon. “So that’s where it was. I thought somebody’d nicked it. Huh, not a lot of bottle now, is it,” he mused, turning it over in his hands.

“Did you make that?” he asked, somewhat impressed. There didn’t seem to be enough of anything on this planet to create a distress signal.

Drax looked proud of himself as he tossed it to the Doctor for examination. “Knocked it up, yeah.” At the Doctor’s look, he shrugged. “Well, you gotta do something. There’s always a chance some geezer would pick up the distress call.”

Wait a moment. “You made this here?” the Doctor asked.

“I never go nowhere without me tools,” Drax scoffed. Then brightened. “Fat lot of good it did, though, eh? Got us both in nick together!” He ruffled the Doctor’s head, which annoyed him almost as much as the nickname.

In an effort to change the subject since he was still trying to put the pieces together in his own mind, the Doctor said, “Drax, I don’t want to pry, but where did you acquire this peculiar vocabulary?”

“Brixton, weren’t it?” Drax replied.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “Brixton?”

“Brixton. London. Earth.” Drax clarified.

“I’ve been to Earth,” the Doctor sighed.

“Yeah, me transport broke down.” He shared a commiserating look. “Hyperbolics, as usual. And I was investigating certain possibilities with regard to replacements. I got done, didn’t I. Ten years I got. Well, I had to learn the lingo, didn’t I, to survive.” He paused, then looked at the Doctor suspiciously. “Why, is there something funny about the way I talk?”

The Doctor answered quickly. “No, no! It’s very colourful. Very… demotic.”

Drax’s smile turned forced. “Yeah, well thanks, Thete.”

“Doctor,” he corrected, stiffly.

“Oh yeah.” Drax continued to stare at him.

“…no offense,” the Doctor finally said, feeling a tension headache building. He remembered why they had fallen out of contact once that class had ended.

“None taken,” Drax replied happily.

The Doctor glared at him. “Drax?” he asked.

“Doctor?” Drax said happily.

“Drax,” the Doctor growled.

Drax finally paid attention. “Yes?”

“That hole in the wall?” The Doctor gestured.

Mystified, Drax looked at him. “What about it?”

“Might it be, I dunno, a way out?” he asked meaningfully.

“No. Not yet, anyway.” Drax shrugged. “I dunno, I’ve got tunnels all over the place, but I can’t seem to find it.”

“Find what?” The Doctor demanded, already getting tired of him.

“The transmat shaft!” Drax said, exasperated. “They all use it. The Shadow and all his horribles. The trouble is, you see, my Tardis is back on Zeos.”

The Doctor had never gotten the urge to strangle somebody with his scarf before, but Drax was coming mighty close. “Yes, but where does it lead?”

Drax grinned and patted the Doctor’s cheek. “Have a look!”

The Doctor hesitated, but crawled through the small opening. Wires, half-created machinery, and other mechanical detritus crowded the small cavern, and the Doctor kicked away a Flebonian Picker in disgust. Worthless trash, the lot of it.

“Well, Doctor, welcome to my world,” Drax said, proudly.

“Master,” a voice said from somewhere in the room.

The Doctor looked around, and saw K9 on his side in the corner. The Doctor rushed over. “K9! What happened?”

The dog moved his ears feebly. “The Shadow’s assistant tricked me. I was answering a distress call when I was transported. The assistant saw me and shot me. Systems critical.”

“Go on recharge cycle, K9.” The Doctor ordered. “I’ll fix you up.”

“Affirmative,” K9 said. “But you must know… the assistant was…” he shut down.

Drax blinked. “Well that’s odd. He wasn’t talking earlier!”

“Not talking now, either,” the Doctor said, and sighed in relief when he saw K9’s circuits. “Nothing too damaging. Just needs a few wires replaced and he’ll be right as rain.” He grinned. “And there’s plenty of that lying around!”

A piece laying in the center of the room caught the Doctor’s eyes and his good mood instantly faded. “Aren’t those stabilizer components?” He asked, picking them up from the larger, cannibalized phaser that had been on top of them.

Drax blinked. “Yeah, they are.”

The Doctor narrowed his eyes. “But you said your TARDIS was parked on Zeos.”

“Yeah, well, I took the stabiliser out. Needs a bit of work.” Drax replied, but there was a nervous undertone.

The Doctor placed one stabilizer down gently, afraid he was going to break it. “How long have you been here?” His tone was light, friendly, but if Rose had been there she would have recognized the warning signs. Drax was not so lucky.

“Well…” Drax considered. “About five years. After the war started.”

“Five years?” the Doctor demanded, trying to control his fury. “For five years you’ve had a dimensional stabiliser virtually intact and you haven’t managed to escape?”

Drax looked uneasy. “Well, I told you, it needed a bit of work…”

“Oh, come on, Drax! You could have repaired that and long-dogged it out of here years ago,” he exclaimed. Before Drax could move away he checked under his collar for a control device.

Drax squirmed away from him, astonished. “Here, what’s the game? Oh, I get it. You think I’m in with the Shadow, don’t you?” He looked angry.

The Doctor’s voice was low, dangerous. “Aren’t you?”

“Now, would I…” Drax began, but the Doctor had had enough with Drax’s games.

“Yes, you would,” the Doctor growled. “What’s he offered you?”

“Nothing!” Drax insisted.

“Are you about to suggest that you and I make a run for it out of here in my Tardis?” the Doctor asked, knowingly.

Drax shrugged. “Well, it’s a good idea.”

“Oh yes, it’s a very good idea, you and me in my Tardis. And what happens then when we’re inside, eh?” he exclaimed. “Sock full of sand, lead pipe and you away with the Key to Time, am I right, Drax?”

The other Time Lord shifted nervously. “Look, I didn’t know it was going to be you, did I,” he finally confessed. “He threatened me with the chop, didn’t he. He said I was the only one who could get hold of it.”

“If you had, do you think he’d let you get away? You’d be in for the chop, too,” the Doctor replied grimly.

Drax wilted. “Yeah, I would, wouldn’t I,” he said, sadly.

“Of course you would.” The Doctor considered him. Despite Drax’s shady loyalties, he was a good man at heart. And if there was one thing he knew about Drax, it was that he always put himself first. “So why don’t you help me? I mean, together we stand a slight chance. And after all, we are Time Lords, you and I. Class of ninety two. If we don’t stick together, who will?”

Drax beamed, and the Doctor knew he was sold.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shadow gains the upper hand, and the Doctor surrenders.

Romana tried not to scream as another, even more painful, electrical current ran through her. Her Time senses insisted that it had been mere moments, but her body was screaming that it was more like hours. “Enough,” the Shadow commanded, and Romana nearly wept. The doors opened and she fell, not having the energy or willpower to move. Not that she wanted to; what the Shadow had forced from her… she wanted to vomit.

“She has told me everything she knows, and it is not enough,” the Shadow muttered. “Still the cursed Doctor stands between me and the Key.” He sneered at her. “We shall see what the Doctor is prepared to offer for a life.”

Romana mustered up the last bit of willpower she had. “I am not afraid to die.”

The Shadow laughed, then turned to the wall. “Oh, but you aren’t the one I’m talking about.” He turned to the wall. “Rose?”

Romana watched in horror as the viewscreen blinked on, revealing Rose. “Master?” she asked.

“Rose, no!” Romana cried out, but the Shadow kicked her. Romana gasped with the pain.

“To the Doctor,” the Shadow ordered Rose.

Helpless to do anything but watch, Romana stared at the screen in despair. This would absolutely destroy the Doctor, and nothing she could do would be able to stop him after that.

~*~

After a lot of arguments and replacing K9’s wires, they finally decided to fix the stabilizers. Still, Drax had insisted on doing it since it was components to his TARDIS, and he didn’t want the Doctor ‘getting his grubby hands on it.’

The Doctor was staring over his shoulder like a hawk. “Try synaptic adhesion,” he said, as Drax fused two wires together.

“Synaptic adhesion?” Drax asked. “It’s the chronostat. Always is.”

He got back to work. The Doctor was silent for a moment, before once again saying, “I think it’s the synaptic adhesion.”

Drax glared at him. “Look, I’ve done thousands of these. Thousands.”

“All right,” the Doctor muttered, but as soon as Drax returned to work he added, “got to be the synaptic adhesion.” This time Drax looked murderous and the Doctor backed off. “All right, all right, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Yeah,” Drax grumbled.

Antsy, the Doctor half-heartedly began shifting through the drifts of scrap metal until he came across another tunnel. Curious, he pried off the cover, and stared at the tunnel. “Drax, where does this lead?” he asked.

“Upper levels,” Drax said absently. “Watch out for the mutes.”

The Doctor barely heard him. “Yeah. Yeah of course.” He started crawling forward.

He had barely crawled a meter when the most wonderful sound in the world reached his ears. “Doctor?” Rose called out. “Doctor, are you there?”

“Rose!” he shouted, not hiding his relief or joy. “Rose, where are you?”

There was a momentary silence. “I think I know where you are. Take your next left, then your right.”

He did so, and found Rose staring at him through an old grating. “Rose,” he nearly sobbed. “Where have you been?” He clutched at the grating.

She remained impassive. “I have a message for you, Doctor.”

He peered at her, worriedly. “Rose? Why aren’t you…” his eyes fell to her neck, and the control device that was resting there. When he spoke next, his voice was broken. “Oh, Rose. Not you.”

“Here is the message for you, Doctor,” she said, calmly. “Romana is with my Master.”

He closed his eyes. “Ah.”

“He offers you a choice. My life in exchange for the Key, and the TARDIS in exchange for Romana.”

He shook his head, slowly. “And if I refuse?”

“Then I and Romana shall die,” Rose said, her voice empty of emotion.

For a long moment, the Doctor didn’t respond, his head bowed. When he finally raised his head, his eyes were dark, and the fire that had been embers until now burned brightly. “I know you’re listening, Shadow,” the Doctor said intently. “And let me tell you one thing: I could have forgiven you for hurting K9. I could have forgiven you for destroying Zeos and Atrios. But by laying a finger on Rose, your life is forfeit. Do you understand me?”

For a split second he could see his Rose in her eyes, staring at him in fear and love and determination, before they were once again blank. “The Shadow has heard. He wishes to inform you that you have twenty minutes to deliver.”

Rose stood and walked away.

He yelled in pure rage, hitting the grating with his fist; it burst out of the wall and clattered to the floor, but the Doctor simply breathed, willing himself to calm down.

“All right up there, Doctor?” came Drax’s cheerful voice.

“No, Drax, not at all,” the Doctor replied, gritting his teeth. “Look after K9. I’m going to get Rose back.”

“Who’s Rose?” Drax called up, but the Doctor was already gone.

He wandered through the halls with a purpose driven by anger, cold fury barely suppressed. The Shadow had known Rose was his weakness, but he had also made a very fatal error- Rose was also his strength.

When the guard found him, the Doctor didn’t even flinch. “Good. You can lead me to the Shadow.”

Though it didn’t respond and merely shoved him forward, the Doctor went willingly. Even if he couldn’t find the sixth segment, he would destroy the Shadow with his bare hands, if need be. He wouldn’t get away with this.

~*~

Drax was muttering to himself over the stabilizers, wondering why they weren’t working. He nearly jumped a foot in the air when K9 suddenly shouted. “Attention! Attention! Malfunction in drive systems. Attention required immediately!”

“Oh, it’s you,” Drax said, then turned back to his work. “I’m busy.”

K9 refused to listen. “Essential restored to vertical position. Alternative is your obliteration.”

Drax scoffed and twisted some wires together. “Leave me alone,” he grumbled, but when K9 started emitting a distress signal he sighed and put down the stabilizer. “All right, all right!” he exclaimed, then placed K9 right side up. “That better?” he asked, relieved when the signal abruptly cut off.

“Affirmative,” K9 sighed, and his lazer retreated into his ‘nose’.

Drax blinked and laughed. “Blimey, it’s a dog. Who’s a little tin dog then?” he teasingly scratched K9 on the muzzle and returned to his work.

“Your silliness is noted. Drive systems regenerating.” K9 informed him.

He didn’t really care, but at least it was all right. Drax prodded at the stabilizers once more, frowning when they refused to function. “I don’t get it. It’s the chronostat, it always is,” he muttered.

“Correction,” K9 said, and Drax glared at him. He thought the dog had gone to sleep. “It is a question of synaptic adhesion.”

“Not you and all,” Drax glowered at him. K9 managed to look smug, much to Drax’s displeasure.

~*~

The Doctor was escorted to the Shadow within moments, Rose and Astra standing by impassively. Romana was chained to the wall, a trickle of blood leading from her temple; though he doubted she was unconscious, it was clear that the Shadow had hurt her. The sight angered him much more than he had expected; though he and Romana would never see eye-to-eye, he considered her a friend. The fact that she had been tortured just to manipulate him gave the Doctor even more of a cause to tear down the Shadow’s world around him.

“So you have given in after all,” the Shadow sneered, materializing in front of him.

Eyes on Romana, the Doctor said, “You know what I said. I have no intention of giving you either.”

“So be it.” To the Doctor’s horror Rose joined Romana, and willingly stood as the Shadow’s men chained her. “Perhaps this will give you more… incentive.” He removed the control device from Rose’s throat, and she sagged for a moment before looking up, confused. Her eyes snapped the Doctor’s when their bond flared back to life, and though he was relieved by its presence the anger over what had been done to her refused to abate.

“The Key and access to the TARDIS, Doctor,” the Shadow requested once more.

The Doctor didn’t respond, eyes locked with Rose. She knew what was going on, but his brave, precious girl didn’t flinch. _I missed you,_ he said with his eyes, and her tiny smile said, _I know; I missed you too._

 _Everything will be alright,_ he replied with a look, and she closed her eyes and meant _I believe in you._

“Then you can watch your assistants suffer,” the Shadow growled once the silence stretched on.

The Doctor didn’t look away from Rose, and they drew strength from each other. “I refuse to negotiate in an atmosphere of threat,” he replied, flatly.

Both Rose and Romana arched from the pain of the electricity, Rose’s mouth opened in a silent scream. He buckled faster than he wished. “Stop! Stop!” he cried out, and hated himself for it.

Romana struggled up. “Doctor, don’t give in to him,” she pleaded. “We can handle ourselves.”

“But you shouldn’t have to!” he finally exclaimed. “I should have…” He stopped, breathed, then turned to the Shadow. “You have the sixth piece, I take it?”

The Shadow inclined his head. “It is here.”

The Doctor looked around the dark room, but there was nothing that looked like it could be the missing segment. “I would like to see it, if it’s at all possible,” he replied.

“You have already seen it,” the Shadow smirked.

“Ah,” he finally said, and avoided looking at Astra. So his theory was true, then. “Yes. And if I bring the other five pieces…”

“Yes?” the Shadow growled.

“What is it you have in mind?” the Doctor asked. “I mean, what do you intend to do?”

The Shadow scoffed. “Come now, Doctor. You know who I am.”

“Yes,” the Doctor conceded. “I suppose you realise I’ve rigged things so that Atrios and Zeos are protected.”

“Your puny Time Loop,” the Shadow sneered.

The Doctor glared. “Yes, my puny… well, it may be puny but it works! If you break that, millions of people will die!”

“That has always been our intention!” the Shadow crowed. “This pathetic little war is but a rehearsal for our grand design!”

The Doctor stiffened. “Our?”

“You have your Guardian and I have mine,” the Shadow replied. “You and I are on the same quest, Doctor, but whereas you have been scavenging across space and time, I have located the sixth piece here.”

Of course. The sixth piece, arguably the most important- the one that had been created by the Gold Guardian, the piece over life and death. By itself, of course, the segment had some power, but when joined with the other pieces it was what gave the Key its power and abilities. The Shadow would have gone for the most dangerous piece first, knowing that the Doctor would have chosen the more logical route, and in doing so not only set up the trap, but also… “Oh,” the Doctor said, realizing why the Shadow wanted it.

“Your are inferior, just as your powers are inferior. Once we have the Key to Time, we shall set not two small planets but the two halves of the entire cosmos at war, and their mutual destruction will be music in our ears. Unlike others, it is not power we seek, but destruction that we glory in.” The Shadow’s voice tried insinuated itself into the Doctor’s psyche, and the Doctor wondered if he should let it. “Fetch the Key.”

He looked at Rose. “Very well,” he said, and looked away.

“No, Doctor!” Romana exclaimed, but he refused to look at her. The guards escorted him away.

~*~

Drax lit up as the device he had cobbled together turned on. “It’s working! You were right Doc, it was synaptic adhesion.”

“Correct,” K9 replied. He had declared moments earlier that he was in full working order, and except for the blaster burn on his side, everything was as it was.

Drax looked at him curiously. “You don’t know what the Doctor wants it for, do you?”

K9 considered. “Negative,” he finally replied.

Well, he was no help. “Better go find out then. Stay, boy,” Drax ordered, and crawled up through the tunnel.

~*~

Since the Doctor was, to all appearances, complying with the Shadow’s demand, Romana and Rose had been let free. “I’m fine,” Rose said, quietly, as Romana looked at her in concern. “We need to leave.”

“How?” Romana replied, quietly. “We’re surrounded.”

Rose looked at her, and Romana wondered at the strange look in her eyes. “Trust me, Romana. The Time will come.”

Romana wondered at this new side of Rose, but before she could pursue it the Shadow spoke. “Now, my Princess, your work is done. Your destiny is at hand.” He removed the controller and Astra nearly stumbled. Confused, she looked around the room, and gasped when she saw the Shadow.

“Who are you?” she demanded, fearfully, and Rose quickly went over to her. Astra clutched at her in relief.

“He calls himself the Shadow,” Rose said gently.

“The shadow that accompanies you all,” he intoned.

Astra looked at Rose, nervous. “It’ll be alright,” Rose said.

Romana wished she could believe her.

~*~

The Doctor led the way toward his TARDIS, trying to gain his ship’s attention. The TARDIS, however, seemed to be busy with re-establishing her telepathic links with Rose. She ignored him every time he tried to get Her attention.

He was almost at the TARDIS when he saw Drax peering out from a tunnel, but he didn’t let his surprise show. If the Shadow thought that trickery and mind games were the way to beat him, then the Shadow didn’t know him at all. Mind games was the Doctor’s field of expertise.

The TARDIS came into view, large and blue and welcoming, and any other time he would have been relieved at the sight. Now however his hearts were heavy. On a whim he used Rose’s key to enter, and barely had to door open before turning to his ‘escort’. “I suppose you realise that once I give the Shadow the Key to Time, that you and your colleagues will be superfluous.” His escort didn’t respond, and the Doctor wondered if it was a construct or a poor Zeon forced to do the Shadow’s will.

Drax crept up behind them, motioning to the Doctor to move out of the way. Though confused, the Doctor did so. “What I mean was that, you see,” he babbled, casually moving aside, “after I’ve given the Shadow the Key to Time, he’ll kill you and then he’ll kill me, and perhaps you don’t care.”

Drax grinned. “All right Doctor, I’m ready for you.”

However, instead of aiming at the escort, Drax pointed his device at the Doctor and fired.

“Drax, stop!” the Doctor shouted, but it was already too late.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> K9 delivers a package, and Rose realizes her destiny.

With his height, the Doctor was used to towering over everybody. His booming voice only added to the image, since his body was, overall, one that demanded respect and to be followed. It had served him well so far, and he was questioned very little by those who weren't travelling with him. The clothes, of course, were only another form of this: his enemies often looked down on his style of dress, automatically assuming that he was a shabbily attired buffoon with delusions of grandeur and an inflated ego. Which, admittedly, was a weak spot. His pride and ego was what had gotten Rose into this predicament after all.

So when he found himself miniaturized, it came as a bit of a shock.

“Doctor! Over here!” Drax shouted, and if it weren’t for his excellent hearing the Doctor probably wouldn’t have heard him. He dodged his escort’s attempts to stomp on him and raced over to Drax, fuming. “You shrank the wrong man, Drax!” the Doctor shouted.

Drax looked nonplussed. “No, I was aiming at you.”

“What didn’t you shrink the mute?” he shouted. Drax blinked, as if he hadn’t considered that. The Doctor gestured at his TARDIS. “The TARDIS door is open, and Rose’s key is in the lock. They can go in there at any time!”

The other Time Lord brightened. “Right, I’ve got it. Now listen. One of us creates a diversion and you fly over there and shut the door!” The escort’s foot landed near them and the Doctor’s teeth rattled from the vibrations. “Nasty,” Drax commented. He looked around where they were located. “Yeah, and we can’t use the dimensional stabiliser in here ‘cos there’s not enough room for when we get back to normal size. We’d just fill up the crack.”

“Like putty,” the Doctor growled.

Drax frowned. “Do you mind?” They creeped out of their hiding spot and stared up at the TARDIS. “Yeah, you’ve got problems.”

The TARDIS had finally seemed to realize that something was wrong when Her door had opened and no one had entered, and was currently in the process of laughing at him. The Doctor scowled. “Yes,” the Doctor told Drax. “The door’s open so the Shadow can go in there and take the Key to Time. Romana can’t help and the time loop must be at breaking point by now. When the countdown reaches zero, up goes Atrios, Zeos and all.”

They watched as the mute continued to search for them. “Life presents a dismal picture, you might say.”

“Yes, you might say that,” the Doctor sighed. “And of course there’s the Marshal.”

Drax looked confused. “The Marshal? He’s on our side.”

“No,” the Doctor told him, wondering how long it would take to get to the TARDIS.

“No,” Drax repeated, disappointed. “Oh well. How does he fit in?”

“He’s in the time loop as well, making a rocket attack on Zeos. Unless, of course, Shapp and Merak get in contact with him.”

Drax blinked. “Where are they?”

“Back on Atrios,” the Doctor replied. “I hope.”

Drax considered this for a moment. “Well, we have one thing in our favour,” he said.

“Oh?” the Doctor asked, not really interested.

“Mobility,” Drax answered.

The Doctor looked at him in disbelief. “Mobility.” Mobility wouldn’t do much good if it took then ten seconds to run an centimeter.

“Well, if we’re only this high, we’re practically invisible, aren’t we?” Drax explained. The mute’s boots paced near them again and the Doctor glowered as dust, dirt, and who knew what else covered him. He shook it off. “Except we daren’t move,” Drax finished.

“Yes. If the Shadow gets the five pieces from the Tardis, which he undoubtedly will, it’s up to us to get the sixth piece.”

Drax tilted his head. “Yeah, but you don’t know what it looks like, do ya? I reckon you’re banjaxed, my old son. End of the road. Finito!”

“The Shadow said I had already seen it,” the Doctor mused. “It must be Astra.”

“Astra?”

The Doctor realized he had said too much. “She must have it.” He looked behind them. “Let’s see where this crack leads, shall we?”

Drax shrugged. “It’s better than getting the boot!” He nudged the Doctor’s shoulder, who reluctantly smiled.

~*~

The Shadow growled when he saw the Doctor disappear on the view screen. “The Doctor has eluded me, but he made his last mistake. See, the door is open! The Key to Time is mine!” He laughed, and left the room.

Rose watched him go, and Astra sighed in relief. Romana, however, was quite plainly angry. “He thinks we’re just going to stand by and let him walk away with everything we’ve worked for!” she exclaimed. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Astra looked happy to comply, but Rose stared pensively around her. “In this place…” she said, quietly, and looked around as if seeing everything for the first time. 

“What?” Romana asked her.

Astra frowned. “Rose, we must leave!”

“My destiny is in this place,” Rose said. “Not on Plicea, not on Earth… not even on the TARDIS. Not yet. My destiny is here.”

Romana gripped Rose’s shoulder. “Rose, listen. You’re not under the Shadow’s influence any more. Now, let’s get out of here before he comes back.”

Rose looked at her. “Don’t you see, Romana? I must stay here. Ever since I arrived I could hear it: the Song. The Song of Time. The Doctor saved my life, but in doing so caused my death. I must be here.”

“Yes, yes, but we must get out of here before the Shadow comes back!” Romana said impatiently.

“Rose, please,” Astra added.

She smiled at them, the strange golden light in her eyes that Romana had noticed earlier. “This is the time of my transcendence.”

“What are you talking about?” Romana demanded, fearing that Rose had somehow been taken control over once again.

“Metamorphosis,” Rose said, serenely.

~*~

Much to the Doctor’s chagrin, they had become quite lost. Traversing through the tunnels full-sized was one thing; attempting travel while one was a few centimeters high was another.

Drax had created a map of the place, and was currently examining it. The Doctor was relieved it was a bit of Time Lord technology, since the map automatically scanned their surroundings and created a 2-D representation of the area upon activation; Drax had to retrace their steps a few times, however, before he finally figured it out. “Yeah, here we are,” he said, pointing at their location. “Right, now, there’s the T junction.” He pointed ahead of them to a darkened pathway. “Right down to the dungeon, left onto the Shadow’s lair.”

The Doctor smirked. “What? You mean there’s a way in he doesn’t know about?”

Drax glowered. “Well, it will be when it’s finished, but a couple of midgets like us won’t be much good on a pick and shovel, will we?”

“No. No, no. no!” The Doctor said sternly. “But if we get K9 up there, we won’t need a pick and shovel, will we? We can still give the Shadow a surprise.”

Drax lifted the stabilizer. “Well, let’s normalize, shall we?”

The Doctor snatched it from him. “No, no, Drax. No, small is lovely.” He started towards the T junction.”

Drax hurried after him. “Bigger is better though, isn’t it?”

~*~

Rose looked at Romana impatiently. “Don’t you understand?”

“Understand what?” Romana demanded. “Rose, we have to protect Astra, and get back to the TARDIS, not to mention save the Doctor along the way!”

“You think Astra is the segment,” Rose replied. “Romana, the sixth segment is life and death.”

“Of course I know that!” Romana exclaimed, exasperated. “Each piece is similar to the Guardian that gave it it’s powers!”

Rose smiled. “Exactly.”

“Rose, you aren’t making any…” her voice trailed off as she stared at Rose in realized horror. “Life. Life and death. You’re the sixth segment.”

Romana felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked to see Rose smiling gently. “It’s ok, Romana. The Doctor will understand. Time works in ways you don’t yet realize; but this is the way it must be.”

Astra looked between them, confused. “You mean Rose is who everyone’s been looking for?”

“Yes,” Romana said. “And she’s in greater danger than we thought.”

~*~

The TARDIS, admittedly, hadn’t been at the top of her game ever since landing on Atrios.

However, it really wasn’t her fault. She had known since the moment Rose had come on board that she was special, even if she hadn’t quite realized at the time what she was. Time certainly treated her differently, but it wasn’t until the TARDIS had been violated by the Time Lords and banished to Earth that She finally understood just what Rose was.

The Guardians had always been a mystery to even the TARDIS, since they worked outside of Time. They operated under their own set of rules, and were constantly jockeying for power- the TARDIS, of course, thought it rather useless since there were better ways to spend eternity.

But without being able to contact the Vortex, the TARDIS had to content Herself with other things: namely the Timelines of Her Doctor and Her Rose. It was there that she found an anomaly.

Her Rose’s Timeline was long, much longer than a human being from the thirty-second century should live. And since her Timeline insisted that nothing had altered her lifespan, that she had been born that way, the TARDIS had run a few scans while Her Rose lay sleeping to figure out the reason. When She discovered what Rose was, the TARDIS had nearly caused a drought on Delphon Eight.

After sending a rather rude message to the Guardian Herself, the TARDIS had reluctantly acknowledged the brilliance of the plan. Rose couldn’t reveal herself unwillingly, and could only give the power that she held to those of her choosing. The gold guardian had bestowed upon Rose sentience, and even if she willingly chose death to become the segment, the power that she gave the Key could only be wielded by her choice. Without permission, the Key would deteriorate and eventually destroy the user, if it even worked at all.

Now, however, without the stabilizing unit that was Rose, the Key was tearing itself apart and the Time Loop rapidly deteriorating. The TARDIS was trying to stabilize the Key for as long as She could, but it was only a matter of Time before She could no longer prevent complete meltdown.

When the Doctor had been shrunk due to Drax’s stabilizer (and he would cause trouble for Her in the future, she could sense it), the TARDIS laughed at him while berating him for leaving Her doors open. Luckily the barely-sentient creature that was outside was too stupid to realized the Doctor’s error.

Normally, She would have happily closed her doors. But the Doctor had left Rose’s key in the lock, and a built-in fail safe prevented her from closing it. She was going to have the Doctor fix it whenever he got back, but in the mean time She was going to berate him over it incessantly.

When the Shadow came to Her, however, the TARDIS panicked. Once the Key was removed from Her interior She could no longer protect it, and the Time Loop would deteriorate fifty times faster. She brightened Her lights to prevent him entry, and as he wailed and cringed away from Her the mute came on board instead. She rumbled forbiddingly at him and did everything She could to prevent it from grabbing the Key, but She was unsuccessful. She felt the Time Loop shudder as the Key passed through Her doors, and through their link She knew the Doctor had felt it, too.

The TARDIS hoped Her Rose would arrive soon. Only she could save them now.

~*~

The Doctor had indeed felt it when the Shadow had gained the Key, and time was of the essence. He dug through his pockets before finding a small communicator, and it didn’t take much tuning before he was able to find K9’s frequency. The robotic dog came shortly after, and they explained the plan to him quickly.

“Everything all right, K9?” the Doctor asked when he was finished.

“Affirmative,” K9 replied, sounding somewhat relieved.

The Doctor paused in his work. “Control box in position?”

“Control box in position,” K9 affirmed.

“Batteries charged?”

“Affirmative,” came the reply.

The Doctor nodded to himself. “Test the blaster, K9.”

K9 did so, and Drax yelped. “You all right, Drax?” the Doctor asked, hiding a smiled.

Drax nodded. “Just about. That bit gets hot.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’d sit somewhere else, if I were you. Are you ready, K9?”

“Affirmative,” K9 said. He sounded eager.

“Remember,” the Doctor cautioned. “It is vitally important that you not show yourself until the time is right. The whole plan depends on that. Understand?”

“Understood, Master,” K9 replied. He began to head towards the TARDIS.

The Doctor switched off the communicator and grinned at Drax. “Did you ever get to Troy, Drax? Little place on Asia Minor.”

~*~

Merak had gotten his wounds taken care of quickly, and while he still limped a little bit he was determined to help Shapp. The technicians on duty had been released, and despite their best tries the Marshal refused to answer their calls and pleas to stop.

“This isn’t working,” Merak groaned when yet another attempt failed. “The records on your computer over Astra didn’t give us anything, the Marshal is refusing to listen, and the Doctor’s Time Loop is decaying.”

Shapp looked pensive. “They need our help, but we have to keep trying the Marshal. That man is stubborn, but he does listen if you try hard enough.”

Merak hesitated, then nodded. “Right. I’ll go find this third planet, and you keep trying the Marshal. Astra is still there, anyway, and I’m not leaving her at… at that thing’s mercy.”

Shapp didn’t seem surprised. “Take my blaster,” he said. “You’ll probably need it.”

Merak accepted it with a thankful nod and headed toward K block. A mute was guarding it, but after tossing Astra’s circlet on the ground as a distraction Merak easily overpowered it. “Take me to the third planet,” he ordered, Shapp’s blaster at its temples. The mute quickly did as it was told, and Merak banged the gun on its head. The mute crumpled, and it was the work of a moment to relieve it of its gun and cloak.

When he stepped off the platform and into the dank tunnels, he looked around cautiously. Movement from one of the branches caused him to shrink back and hurriedly cover himself with the hood, and he was surprised to see a procession led by a man reverently carrying some sort of blue cube. He seemed important, somehow, so once they had passed his hiding place Merak quietly slipped into line behind them.

The leader of the procession brought them to a large cavern, and set the cube on a pedestal that lit up. Merak, however, was glued to the sight of Astra huddled with Romana, and another blonde haired girl who was looking at the cube calmly.

“The fulfillment of that for which I have waited since eternity began,” the leader said, almost reverently. Merak inched closer to Astra. “You see, Princess, you cannot escape your destiny!”

Astra took a deep breath. “I am not the final segment. You were wrong, Shadow.” Her face fell. “Rose is.”

The Shadow looked disturbed for a moment, but quickly regained composure. “It matters not. Accept your destiny, and become the final segment.”

Rose smiled serenely. “My destiny is my choice. And I will always choose.” She willingly reached out to the Key, and a golden light enveloped her. When it cleared, a translucent shape hovered in midair, sparkling gently. 

Merak positioned himself behind Romana and Astra. “It’s me,” he said, quietly. “How did she… why…?”

Romana’s voice was pained. “Rose is the final segment. I can only hope that the legends are true.”

“Legends?” Astra asked.

“The final segment was created by the guardian who controls life and death, the most mysterious of them all,” Romana explained. “She gave her segment life, and with life comes a choice. If the legends are true, Rose can decide who wields the Key.”

The Shadow reached for the tracer, and Romana stiffened. “No! You’ll break the Time Loop!” she exclaimed. “Millions will die!”

“A small beginning,” the Shadow said, and gripped the tracer.

At the same time, the wall exploded. The Shadow jerked back. “What is this?” he demanded.

Romana was immensely relieved to see K9 enter through the new hole. “Apologies,” he said. “But I have a delivery.”

The Shadow looked ready to explode from anger, but before he could do much the Doctor and Drax suddenly appeared, Drax wielding the stabilizer.

The Doctor leapt for the Shadow and knocked him to the ground, picking up the final segment. “You interfering fools!” the Shadow yelled. “No one can resist the power of darkness!”

The Doctor laughed and the Key lit up, blinding the Shadow. “Quick! Back to the TARDIS!” he shouted, and they all raced out of the room.

“You go on, Doctor!” Drax shouted, taking refuge behind a large boulder. “I’ll hold him off!”

The Doctor was genuinely concerned. “How will you get back?”

“Transmat shaft!” Drax said. “See you on the TARDIS!”

The Doctor quickly caught up with them, counting the number of heads. Romana watched him carefully, and she knew the exact moment when he recognized Astra and not Rose. His eyes widened. “But if Astra’s there…”

Romana didn’t want to tell him, but she knew she must. “Rose was the final segment, Doctor. We were wrong.”

He didn’t respond, but his pace became quicker and a fire had started in his eyes. Romana hoped that he wouldn’t let his anger get the best of him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Final Chapter~ The Marshal gets a demotion and the White Guardian reveals himself.

By the time they reached the TARDIS he was leading them, and ushered them inside quickly. “Set the course to Zeos,” he barked at Romana, carefully placing the Key back on the table. Slowly, he pulled out the sixth segment, staring at it with a look stuck between heartbreak and anger.

Astra carefully laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

The Doctor shuddered, then carefully schooled his features into neutrality. “No, Astra. It is the fault of fools who think they deserve power over everything.”

She looked distressed. “But if Rose hadn’t been with me…”

The Doctor looked at her and gave her a tiny, forced smile. “We were pawns, Astra, we all were. Pawns to do the guardian’s dirty work.” He looked down at the segment. “Rose had a choice. She chose to save us. And if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make certain her sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

The entire trip back to the TARDIS, Romana had been watching him carefully, wondering how he was taking the news. He had only just surrendered to his feelings, and having his fears proved hours after he had pushed them aside… this calm, almost civil Doctor was not the one she was expecting. She had seen him enraged when Rose was in trouble, and now she was… Rose had… he shouldn’t be calm. He should be furious. She was, and Rose was only her friend. “How could you give up?” she demanded. “We have to do something, Doctor. No one should have that power, not even the guardians!”

The Doctor looked at her coldly. “Set the coordinates, Romana,” he growled.

“Is that all you can say?” she asked, stunned. “Rose was a living, breathing person, and what you two shared was… I’ve never seen any two people happier than when you were together! How could you throw that away? How can you not care?”

At that moment she knew she had gone too far. The fire that had been banked roared to life, and he seemed impossibly taller than he was in actuality. “Don’t you dare accuse me of not caring!” the Doctor shouted, and it seemed the entire ship dimmed as he was cloaked in shadows. “If I could I would reorder Time to save her. I would tear apart the void between dimensions, throw myself into the eye of harmony. She meant everything, Romana, and I trusted her with everything that I am. And she trusted me. It’s because of that faith that I will see this through. What’s done is done, Romana. Even Time Lords can’t control Time, and I thought you knew that.” He was breathing deeply, raggedly. “You told Rose that our greatest curse was fear for what could come. Well, it’s happening right now, and standing here arguing about it isn’t going to change that, isn’t going to bring her back. Now set the course for Zeos and the room Mentalis occupies, or else millions will die and her death will have been in vain!” He looked at her, scathingly. “Or have you forgotten about the Time Loop?”

She withdrew. “No, I haven’t forgotten.” There was silence as she laid the course in. Astra had retreated to the corner with Merak, and they clutched at each other, staring at the Time Lords with wide eyes. Reluctantly, she added, “Can you add Ro… the new segment in?”

He looked down. “In less than a second?”

It was a useless question, she knew. With the Key deteriorating rapidly and less than a second left in the Time Loop, they didn't have much room for error.

The TARDIS landed, and after ordering Astra and Merak to stay put, the Doctor ran out of the TARDIS. “Cutters!” he demanded, and Romana handed them to him.

Drax raced into the room seconds later. “Blimey, it’s a mess in here!” he exclaimed, picking his way over to where the Doctor and Romana were situated.

The Doctor glared at him. “No time, Drax! What colour?”

“Green!” Drax said, then paused. “I think.”

“What?” Romana exclaimed.

Drax began searching his pockets. “Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve done it. I’ve got a diagram somewhere.” As they urged him to hurry he glared. “Don’t fluster me!”

Romana was jittery, eyeing the countdown as it reached one, then jumped back up to ten. Any moment now it would reach zero, and they’d all be blown up.

“Ah!” Drax finally announced. “Pyramid, green! I told ya!”

The Doctor cut the wire, and the countdown jumped to zero. Time seemed to freeze, and everything went abruptly silent. Romana braced herself for an explosion that never came, and relaxed only marginally when Mentalis remained silent. The Doctor’s expression mirrored her own- the victory was bittersweet.

“You took your time, Drax,” he grumbled. “Where’s K9?”

“He’s on his way,” Drax said cheerfully. “He travels a bit more slowly than me, you know.”

Romana immediately turned to the Doctor. “Aren’t we forgetting something?” she hissed.

He looked at her. “What?”

“The Marshal!” she exclaimed, and ran for the TARDIS.

The Doctor sprinted after her, furiously spinning dials and levers on the console before staring at the viewscreen intently. Astra screamed when the missiles launched, but when they streaked past Zeos and hit the Shadow’s sattelite, she and Merak cheered.

“What a shot, Marshal!” the Doctor exclaimed.

“But he hit the Shadow’s planet instead!” Romana exclaimed.

Though his eyes were still dark, his smile was infectious. “Well, I can’t help what he was aiming at.”

Romana narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”

“A mere nothing,” he drawled, but there was a hardness in his voice. “A mere deflective forcefield set up for a millisecond set up between the Marshal and Zeos, and it bounced the missiles smack onto the planet of evil.”

Romana stared at him in alarm. “Is that all?” This darker side was… unsettling. If this was what he would be like without Rose to ground him...

Drax looked at K9, who had finally reached them. “Well, he might have told us, mightn't he, dog? We was expecting to get blasted into infinity.”

“Affirmative,” K9 said.

The Doctor sniffed. “I’m not going to apologize. I just saved our lives! Can I drop you somewhere, Drax?”

Drax perked up. “No, leave me with those two. I’ve got a contract job down there.”

“Contract job?” the Doctor asked suspiciously. “No armaments, I hope.”

“No,” he replied, looking offended. “Reconstruction, war damage, scrap and that. Me and the Marshal's going fifty-fifty.”

Romana blinked. “You and the Marshal?”

“Yeah, well, he's out of a job now, isn't he?” Drax pointed out. “I mean, no war, no job, so I took him on.”

The Doctor looked confused. “When did you arrange this?”

Drax beamed. “In about an hour’s time, I reckon.”

Astra spoke up. “We’d be honored to have your help, Drax.”

The Time Lord winked at her. “Well, it’ll probably be about sixty-forty, know what I mean?”

Astra laughed. “I understand completely.” She paused and approached the Doctor. "I truly am sorry about Rose, Doctor. She... she saved my life, and became a friend in the time I knew her. Atrios won't forget her sacrifice."

The Doctor nodded mutely, and Merak gently touched her shoulder. Astra let Merak lead her out the TARDIS, clutching his hand.

“By the way, Doctor,” Drax said, before he left. “If you ever need to get that off your hands”- he gestured at the Key- “give me a call, ey?”

The Doctor glowered. “Goodbye, Drax.”

“Right then. Goodbye! Remember me to Gallifrey!” he said cheerfully, and exited the TARDIS.

Romana closed the doors behind him, and turned towards the Doctor. “Are you all right?” she asked, quietly.

He was staring down at the final segment. “I’m always all right,” he said. He looked up at her, and she was startled to see that he looked… vulnerable. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to end up, Romana. Astra was supposed to be the segment. All the signs were there! Rose has been with us the entire time, and not once did the tracer react.”

“She wasn’t ready yet,” Romana said gently, and she was well aware that her body language reflected that of one approaching a wounded wild animal. “We told the tracer to search for specific pieces, not the Key in general. Rose knew what would happen, and she accepted her fate anyway.”

He looked at the Key. “We can change Time, Romana. With the Key, we can change the course of events. We can go back in time so that Atrios never went to war, we can stop the Shadow from taking power, we can tell ourselves not to accept this foolish, insane quest.” His hand gripped the segment tightly. “I can stop Rose from dying.”

Romana looked at him, concerned. “Doctor…”

“And that is why I must not use it,” he finally said, defeated. “This power shouldn’t belong to anyone. The sooner we give the Key to the Guardian… the better.”

He stared at the Key for a long time before straightening his shoulders. “Right. Best get this over with, then.” Swiftly, he grabbed the tracer and pulled it out, grimacing as it burned him. The fake piece was brushed off the top in broken fragments, and the final segment was slotted in place before he replaced the tracer once more.

Almost immediately, they felt a shift in the air. Romana stepped up beside him and watched as the Key shimmered with a faint golden light before the glow faded and it returned to its regular state. But the air around it… it seemed to breathe. There was no better way to describe it. The raw, universal power that coursed through it was tangible, and she could see why a lesser being would be driven mad with power.

The Doctor tore himself away from it and moved to console. Romana stopped him. “She cannot die in our memories, Doctor,” she reminded him.

“I know,” he finally said quietly.

Someone knocked, and they looked, startled, at the viewscreen where the White Guardian smiled at them. “My congratulations to you, Doctor,” he said.

“Thank you, Sir,” the Doctor replied, instantly hiding his pain and anger. This was the Doctor Romana recognized- bold, brash, commanding and flighty. “Thank you.”

The White Guardian nodded. “You performed your task with admirable dispatch. The universe has much to thank you for.”

The Doctor inclined his head. “Well, it was a pleasure. Wasn’t it, Romana?”

Romana blinked. “Doctor, that man isn’t the President,” she reminded him. He had been the one to send her with the Doctor after the Key, after all.

He frowned at her. “What’s the President got to do with anything?”

The White Guardian smiled indulgently at Romana. “I can change my form or shape at will, my dear child. I appeared to you as the President so as not to alarm you.”

“Just be careful who you’re talking to,” the Doctor scolded her.

Romana was taken aback. “Sorry, I..” she wondered what had caused the sudden mood change. He was like this around enemies… but the White Guardian was on their side!

Wasn’t he?

“You have the Key to Time, Doctor?” the Guardian asked.

The Doctor immediately faced him again. “Oh, I do indeed. Do you like it?”

“Do I like it?” the Guardian asked, bemused. “Yes, yes, I suppose you could say that I like it.”

Romana felt the shift in the Doctor’s emotions, and he spoke to the Guardian as she was puzzling them out. Blasted man, why was he keeping her in the dark again? “We’re very proud of it, Sir. Aren’t we, Romana, proud of it?” he asked, then looked at her like she had dribbled on her dress.

She looked at him in confusion. “What? Oh, well, yes. Yes we are.”

“What happens now, Sir?” the Doctor asked, conversationally. “You said, if I remember in our first conversation, that once it was assembled it would stop the entire universe and enable you to restore the natural balances of good and evil throughout the whole of the universe.”

The Guardian smiled. “That is correct, Doctor. So, will you release the Key to me that I may do this?”

“Certainly, Sir, yes, certainly, of course.” He walked quickly over the the Key. “Key to Time, I command you…” The Doctor paused, then turned back to the screen. “Could I ask you something, Sir?”

The Guardian looked annoyed. “Yes, Doctor?”

“It's just that, well, the Key is already assembled, Sir,” the Doctor admitted. “I mean, couldn't you restore the balances now?”

“Yes Doctor, but I must have the Key for safe keeping. It is an awesomely powerful key,” he reminded them, exasperated.

“Oh yes, Sir, yes, and mustn't be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. I quite understand, Sir, yes.” The Doctor conceded. “Key to Time, I command…” Once again he stopped, and focused on the Guardian with a dangerous intensity. Though his voice was calm, his eyes were anything but. “What about the sixth segment?”

“What about it?”

The Doctor shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets, not breaking eye contact. “Well, I mean, as you know, Sir, the sixth segment was in fact Rose. I mean, if the pieces are maintained in their present pattern it means that she'll... be imprisoned forever, Sir.”

Romana had barely noticed his hesitation, and wished that she could say something. However, she recognized his tactic; he sensed that something was wrong, and he was trying to make the Guardian slip up.

“That is, of course, regrettable,” the Guardian finally replied, and Romana’s eyes widened.

“Yes,” the Doctor said quietly. “Very regrettable.”

The Guardian shrugged. “But with the fate of the Universe at stake…”

“Quite,” the Doctor said calmly, eyes flashing. “You can't be too careful. I quite understand.” He whirled. “Key to Time, I command that you stay exactly where you are!” He slammed a button down on the console, and the TARDIS hummed smugly in his head.

“Doctor!” the Guardian exclaimed in outrage. “You have fully activated all the TARDIS’s defenses!”

The Doctor looked at him knowingly. “We can't be too careful, can we? And it would be a terrible tragedy for the universe if it suddenly turned out that I was colour blind. Not to mention that Rose will never let me hear the end of it if I was...”

The Guardian was furious. “Doctor, release the Key to me immediately!” he interrupted.

“...unable to distinguish between the White Guardian and the Black Guardian!” the Doctor finished.

Romana rushed over to him. “Doctor, what do you mean?”

“Look!” he demanded, and Romana stared as the white melted away to black.

“Don't you see?” the Doctor scoffed. “The White Guardian would never have had such a callous disregard for human life.”

Romana felt ashamed that she hadn’t recognized him sooner. “Of course. Rose, the sixth segment. He would have dispersed it immediately.”

The Black Guardian interrupted them. “Doctor, you will die for this!”

The Doctor grew serious. “I think not,” he growled dangerously. “Remember, the Key to Time is still mine, rage all you like.”

“I shall destroy you for this!” the Guardian screamed. “I will disperse every particle of your being to the furthest reaches of eternity!”

“Ah well, I wish I could stay and watch you try, but you know how it is.” He replied, harshly. “Places to go, people to see, things to do. Romana?”

She startled. “Yes?”

He reached for the tracer. “When I give the signal… dematerialize.” Eyes still on the Guardian, he removed the tracer from the Key. He smirked. “Now!” he shouted, and snapped the tracer in half.

There was a blinding flash.

~*~

Light. Light and softness and a gentle current.

_Where am I?_

She was everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere; Time played along her periphery but she was drifting, directionless, in the spaces between. She reached forward and Time came willingly, but without anything to tell her what to do Time slipped away again through her fingers.

_Who am I?_

She barely remembered if anything existed before this. If she concentrated, she could see flashes of images-

_blue that meant home, a song on the wind, velvet, brown curls, cricket, rainbow coat umbrella cravat leather pinstripes bowtie red silk_

\- but it was all meaningless. Time was meaningless. All that existed was the here, the now, the eternal.

There was a crack. Time splintered.

_Rose?_

She fell, ribbons slipping through her fingers and light fading to darkness. She screamed, silently, and sensation slammed into her. Cool floor under her legs, upper body braced against a familiar form- a hand wrapped in hers, the other cupping her face. A Song in the back of her mind and a woman’s concerned voice. “How is she?”

“Rose, wake up,” came a voice close by. “Rose, precious girl, come back to me.”

Arms, legs, hands, feet, mouth, ears, eyes. Heart, lungs, stomach. Sound, taste, hearing, sight. TARDIS, Romana, K9…

“Doctor?”

“Rose!” Her eyes fluttered open, and she saw bright blue eyes framed with unruly brown curls. But he also looked… different. “Rose, how do you feel?”

She stared up at him. “How… how did I…?”

“The Doctor broke the tracer,” Romana replied from somewhere to her right. Rose forced her gaze over to where the Time Lady was sitting, looking immensely relieved. “With the segments no longer bound together, they separated.”

Rose blinked. “Oh.” She held up her free hand and stared at it. “Am I…?”

“I’ll have to run tests,” the Doctor said, his thumb gently caressing her cheek. “But other than you sleeping for a long time in the future, you seem perfectly healthy.”

Alarmed, she sat up, but the Doctor kept her firmly in his grasp. “How long was I gone?”

“You were transformed into the segment for approximately two hours,” Romana replied, smoothly standing to check something on the TARDIS. “And you were asleep for about five minutes…”

“...and twenty-three seconds,” Rose finished with her. Eyes wide, she stared at the Doctor, realizing what was different now. “I… I can see your Timelines. They’re dim, but…” her hand traced one that originated at his temple and finished somewhere near his pulse point. “They’re beautiful.”

Though his eyes were burning with a fire she couldn’t name, his voice was worried. “Realizing that you were the segment must have awakened your latent abilities. Since you are now a creation of Time, it makes sense that you can understand it better.”

“Will you teach me?” she asked, her hands now lightly tracing his features.

The fire died, replaced by something soft and precious. “Anything, Rose,” he said, and kissed her gently.

It was soft and chaste and was over far too quickly, but Rose didn’t mind. She curled up in his embrace, not willing to let him go- they had been separated during adventures before, of course, but never for that long nor to that extreme. Her mind was still distraught over the Shadow manipulating it and transforming into the segment so soon after, but she felt safe in his arms. From the way he was clutching at her, he was equally as traumatized.

“Where are we going?” Rose asked, when she felt the TARDIS shift into the Vortex.

The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Romana narrowed her eyes at him. “You have absolutely no sense of responsibility whatsoever.”

Both Rose and the Doctor blinked at her. “We have no idea how Rose’s transformation affected her! You're capricious, arrogant, self-opinionated, irrational and you don't even know where we're going,” she said, in angry, clipped words.

“Exactly,” he said, and Romana gaped at him. Rose giggled.

“I think I understand,” she breathed, and the Doctor tilted his head. “If we knew where we were going, then the Black Guardian would know too, right?”

He beamed at her. “Precisely. I’ve created a randomiser that’s fitted to the guidance system. It operates under a very complex scientific principle called pot luck.”

Rose giggled. “Well, at least this time you have an excuse when you land wrong.”

“Ye of little faith,” he said, dryly, then carefully maneuvered her so that he was carrying her, bridal-style, by the time he stood up. “Come on. I need to see just what has been done to you. The TARDIS will bring us somewhere safe, and we can relax for a few days. I think the Universe owes us that much.”

Romana watched them go, torn between fondness and exasperation. Beside her, K9 was preparing himself for his recharging cycle. She lay a hand on the console, watching as the swirl of Timelines that surrounded her two companions shone brightly together. “Please let them rest, for a little while at least,” she whispered, pleading to whatever powers that existed.

Around her, the TARDIS hummed quietly, as they headed for parts unknown.

~*~

“Do you think Rose will be alright?” Astra asked, as she and Merak watched Drax attempt to sway the Marshal to his side. Since Astra had just fired him, he looked ready to accept since the alternative was prison.

Merak held her hand tightly. “I think so. The Doctor will do anything for those he loves.”

Astra was quiet, though a private, small smile fought to spread. “He does, doesn’t he?” she murmured, remembering Rose’s words on how even the strongest person needed someone to lean on. She looked at Merak, thinking of how, even when his own life was at stake, he never gave up on her and did everything he could to make sure she was safe. Perhaps she could be selfish after all.

Quickly, she pressed her lips to his, smiling as he stiffened in shock. She pulled away before he could respond, however. “Come on. Atrios needs us more than ever.”

Together, hand in hand, they walked towards a brighter future than they had ever imagined.


End file.
